I feel that teaching children to money manage from a really early age is vital to help set the foundations for a debt free adulthood, God knows, they will likely have enough debts without struggling to manage their day to day finances too.
Just recently Reuben has been asking for a lot of toys. He’s suddenly developed a taste for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (on top of transformers) so he wants the whole set! Now I will say that all of my children are spoiled rotten with toys, it’s one of our vices as parents, we rarely say no and they get toys galore… The problem we now have is that Roo seems to think that wanting equates to having and that isn’t good at all.
After talking it over we decided that we thought, with his new ‘big boy status’ as a school boy, now would be the perfect time to introduce pocket money and a chore chart to help him understand money matters and how you have to earn money in order to buy the things you desire or need.
I’ve set up a chore chart for Roo, silly things such as: wash dishes (something I will help him do of course), tidy toys away, get a good behaviour stamp at school, eat dinner without silly behaviour (he’s going through a phase of refusing to eat unless fed!!) and so on. The maximum he can ‘earn’ in a day is £3.50, though that is highly unlikely! I will tell him that he can spend his money whenever he wants to, but I know the things that he wants are between £30-£50, so they are going to require some saving on his behalf. I feel that teaching children to money manage from a really early age is vital to help set the foundations for a debt free adulthood, God knows, they will likely have enough debts without struggling to manage their day to day finances too.
On a side note, I’m a big saver so I had the idea that whatever Reuben has to ‘pay for’ with his money (even if he chooses to spend £6 on some figures) we will take his money to the shop, he will pay for it and we will then reimburse the money into his savings account… This thought is provided he doesn’t get a bit too good at saving and suddenly decide to buy a Lamborghini… He’s on his own then!
What are your thoughts, do you think it’s important to help children become money minded and set up chores for them to earn?
Harriet x
