Money

Money and how our kids handle it isn't something that we discussed, but it has such great opportunities for us as parents I think it would be great to share what Love and Logic has to say about kids and money. I'm going to share six thoughts that the Parenting Teens with Love and Logic book shares, then what I'm thinking about them. This is from page 252 if you want to read more about it yourself.

1. Children do not earn their allowances.  (...being paid for chores robs them of the dignity of holding up their fair share of the family workload...) 
2. Provide the allowance at the same time every week.
3. Never insist that children save the allowance.
4. Allow children to spend, save, give, or waste the money any way they see fit.
5. A teen's allowance should be enough to cover most regular activities, but not much more than that. 
6. When it's gone, it's gone. 

I think managing money is a great thing for our kids to learn how to do. I haven't at all done it the way Love and Logic suggests, and I don't see myself changing right now. But if you don't have a money system already, this would be a great way to start. In our house we don't do allowances. Our kids do chores because that is the expectation, and we don't pay for just being a member of the house. A couple of times my husband has tried out giving allowances, but we are terrible about remembering and having cash. So we totally fail at the same time every week thing, and we forget why we were even doing it. Our two older kids do have opportunities to earn money, and it has been a great experience for them to work on managing it. Our family rule is whatever they earn they can keep 50% to do with whatever they want. 10% goes to tithing and 40% goes to saving. They do complain about this,  but we have just always done it and they go along with it. When our second oldest got a job mowing lawns this summer he suddenly had much more money than he had ever had before. He has been spending it pretty liberally. Soon he is going to run out and the lawn mowing will be over for the season and I think a "significant learning opportunity" will arise.