As parents, one of our desires is to instill in our children skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. We only get around 18 years to train, teach, nurture, and mentor our children. Ultimately, they are responsible for the choices they make. But we want to do everything we can to help guide them now to lay a strong foundation for their future.
One way we’re seeking to teach our children valuable skills is by paying them for doing chores. I know that the whole concept of giving allowances or paying your children can be controversial. But here’s what we’ve decided: we want to give our children the best money management skills possible. In order to do so, they need to be handling money. And we believe the best time to start them is when they are young.
So, we set up a system of Non-Paid Chores and Paid Chores few years ago and, so far, it’s worked really well. Here’s the basic rundown on it:
Non-Paid Chores are chores you are required to do as a member of our family. These are non-optional; we’re a team and we all need to pull our own weight for our family to function well. These are things like vacuuming, cleaning your room, cleaning the bathroom, laundry, and so forth.
Paid Chores are chores you can elect to do and get paid to do. The only requirement is that your Non-Paid Chores have to be done first before you do any Paid Chores (well, you’re welcome to do them, but you won’t get paid for them if your Non-Paid Chores aren’t done first!). These are things like vacuuming out the car, sweeping the garage, cleaning Mom & Dad’s bathroom… the list of options changes based upon what things need to be done around the house at the time.
Here are four reasons we have decided to pay our children for doing chores:
1. We Want to Encourage a Strong Work Ethic
One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me growing up was a strong work ethic. They provided us many opportunities to work hard and while I didn’t always enjoy those long hours of hard work around the house and on our land, I look back now and know that much of my persevering attitude is a direct result of those opportunities.
By giving our children the option to do extra chores and get paid for them, we’re teaching them that there are rewards for hard work. It’s been so fun to see them experience those rewards firsthand!
2. We Want to Teach Real-Life Skills
We have our children start paying for things from a young age. In fact, from the time all our children were three or four years old, they had their own spending money that they had earned by doing chores and projects for us.
When we’re out shopping, they can bring their own spending money and spend it however they’d like (within reason!). This helps them learn valuable money management skills and also prevents the gimme attitude that can quickly pop up when out shopping. If a child sees something they want and they ask me if we can buy it, my response is always, “Did you bring your money?”
I also love the real-life skills our children are learning from taking their items up to the register and paying for them themselves. They learn about counting change, interacting with sales clerks, and making sure they have enough money to pay for their items in the first place. 
3. We Want Them to Make the $3 Mistakes
When our children to use their own spending money to buy things they want to purchase, we don’t give a whole lot of input or guidance — unless they ask us for it. Why? Because we want them to learn how to think through the wisdom of purchases on their own. We won’t always be around to guide their purchases, so we want them to learn to think through what the best deal is and what the best use of their money is without a lot of prodding from us.
We also want them to make money mistakes. This might seem harsh, but we’d much rather have them make $3 mistakes now when they are little to hopefully prevent some $3,000 and $30,000 mistakes down the road.
They’ve learned a lot of lessons when they bought cheap items that were broken within a few days and they’ve learned that spending all your hard-earned money on some impulse purchase can often lead to regret. These instances have resulted in great discussions about how to carefully think through purchases and how to make sure you’re making the best use of your money.
4. We Want to Provide Them Opportunities to Give
One of the greatest joys of paying our children for doing chores has been watching them become generous givers. We encourage them to set aside a portion of their money for giving and we regularly talk about the needs around the world.
We’ve been so proud to watch our children fund Operation Christmas Child boxes and buy goats and chickens and help fund a water project for those in other countries through Samaritan’s Purse. Truly, there has been nothing more rewarding as a parent than seeing our children want to follow our family’s mantra to “Live simply so others can simply live.”
Do you pay your children for chores? Why or why not? I’d love to hear your thoughts. {And if you disagree with anything in my post, I want to hear your thoughts… we’re still learning and very much a work in progress as parents!}
Note: The Give, Save, Spend Wallets were sent to us as a gift from Melissa from A Time For Everything. My kids LOVE them! Thank you, Melissa!
