The Time Has Come to Teach Her About Money…

…
My almost 3-1/2-year-old has quite the obsession with money. I thought it was just a phase and would go away but almost a year later it is still going strong. She is very aware of it–how we spend it, where it is in the house, how Daddy makes it, so it is about time to TEACH her about money.

This is geared toward younger children but I’m sure you could tailor this toward older children using the same principles; just expound on it a bit more.

We decided it was time for her to have an allowance and learn about money through experience; this is what we have done with her:

#1 We involved her in the process by allowing her to put together a chore chart. There is this great (and FREE!) website that takes you through the steps of putting together a chore chart and at the end you simply print it out. You can choose what character you want, font, number or rows and columns. This way she is excited and agrees upon the chores that she and we chose for her to do everyday.

#2 Tyler talked to her about needs and wants, all that we have to pay for to live our lives and how lucky we are to be able to meet our needs.

#3 As we talked to her about this we told her about allowance and how it is up to her to decide if she wants to save it for something big and fun or spend it little by little on something small. We are giving her free agency (to an extent, mind you) so she can learn from this experience and not be suffocated by others’ “suggestions” or rules.

#4 Lastly and most importantly we taught her about helping others, how when you are blessed like our family that you do all you can to help those in need. In our home we will expect all of our children to pay  tithing, or 10% of their earnings to our church. We told her that this is what Heavenly Father and Jesus asks of us and how it is an important commandment we live by. She was excited to learn sometimes your tithing goes to help those less fortunate both locally and in faraway places. They also use it to build beautiful temples and church buildings and to help missionaries like her two uncles and aunts to teach others about the gospel.

#5 We are setting ourselves up for success by having a plan that is simple enough we can stick to. Every Sunday we are going to meet around the dinner table, count her money, have her pay her 10% and see what she decides to do with the rest.

What have you done with your children to teach them about money?

Comments are closed.