Parenting – it’s a hot topic. We all need encouragement and help and ideas from one other. Be Soft. Be Strong. Isn’t that a great thought to pursue in our parenting endeavors? Angel Soft® is producing a video series called “Two Mom’s On”, where moms will be discussing hot parenting topics with each other on Angel Soft®’s social channels. Today I want to branch out on one of those topics that comes up a lot in my mom circles – allowance. We’ve tried lots and lots of different methods and approaches, but have settled on one that’s really been working well for our family the past several years, and so I’m here to tell you All About Commissions.
We really want to help develop a work ethic in our children and right along side that value, we want to develop their skills for handling money smartly. And so we’ve embraced the commissions system. It helps you to Be Soft yet Be Strong with your kiddos.
Allowance is where you allow your children to have a monetary amount each week. And so we use the terminology Commissions instead. They’re commissioned to do jobs around the house. So they get paid for their chores. They don’t get paid for their responsibilities, such as their own laundry or keeping their own room clean. But they do get paid for their jobs around the house.
They get 10 cents per job, and some jobs are 25 cents. They have about 4 jobs each weekday (like sweep the floor), and then we have special “weekly” jobs that they typically do on Saturday (like clean the windows).
We sit down with them about once a quarter and swap jobs, etc. They get to take turns picking the jobs they want. So they have a say in the jobs they are being commissioned to do. Then we sit down with them weekly (in theory! we miss a lot…) and review their chart and pay them according to the work they have done. Helpful hint – have a giant jar of dimes and quarters and a stack of dollar bills ready – it really makes it easier to pay them when it’s all on hand right there. You’ve gotten sneak peeks into our method on Instagram.
I love that our system is two-fold – developing a work ethic and then developing their skills at handling money. I can see their work ethic developing as we’ve really had them involved in the building of our own house.
And I can see their skills at handling money developing as well. If they want something, they know they have to save their money to purchase it. My daughter is 10 and she saved commission and birthday money for about a year to buy herself a kindle – and I know she appreciates it more because she earned it for herself. We encourage the kiddos to put money towards tithing, saving, and spending.
I thought it’d be fun to have the kids chat about our system – – here’s a couple of minutes of that:
And here’s a great breakout snippet – you can share your stories on the Angel Soft Facebook page
Click here to see the entire Two Moms On video series!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Georgia Pacific. The opinions and text are all mine.