Introducing pocket money as incentive / Money tool

December2012

I'd like some ideas about the best way to introduce the concept of pocket money to my children, who are 5 and 3.

We are going away for a weeks holidays in August and I thought it might help if their spending money (for shops etc) was pocket money that they earned. To be clear, I don't mean money for ice creams or snacks, I mean if we saw a toy shop or something in the airport, etc.

Things that would help me at home are
Tidying their toys
Eating what I suggest (although I'm reluctant to reward eating, I do need to encourage healthy eating in my eldest)
Good attitude

When school finishes we won't have any camps etc or scheduled activities, although I do use activities as rewards - eg once this is done we can go to the park, if mammy has to tidy ALL the toys I won't have time to play jigsaws, etc

I am trying, I suppose, to foster notions of responsibility re belongings, the skill of saving and confidence from earning.

Have any of you introduced this kind if thing at this age, and can you recommend any methods?

Do you give cash every day so the child can visually see how much they are earning?
Do you tie it into responsibilities?
Would you allow them to spend some every week on a small toy, ice cream?

I welcome all advice and opinions.

(By the way I don't think the 3 year old will get the concept - I'm not sure the 5 year old will! - but the youngest apes the eldests behaviour).

lonestargirl

I do think you have to separate ordinary tasks from extra ones - I would only pay for extra ones. Emptying the dishwasher, setting the table etc. are all part of life and I wouldn't want to foster a situation where they refused to do a job without payment. I think it's perfectly fine to offer a child payment for cleaning the car for you for example. The only issue is at the age yours are at there are not many tasks that you could realistically pay them for.

Two other money management techniques my mother used were to offer a high interest rate on saving our pocket money - foregoing sweets this week could then lead to a book 2-3 weeks later and introducing a clothes allowance once we were teenagers. If we had spent all our allowance and ran out of socks then we could buy them with our pocket money (she bought our essentials, like uniforms and sports gear outside the allowance).

mullmick

We have used this technique to encourage saving/ early maths skills with our 5 year old (recently 6).

Just some suggestions that might help based on our own experiences of trying this, and some of the mistakes we made along the way... but you've probably already thought of these:

- For my 5 year old, August would be a REALLY long way away. So, to keep up the momentum, the ritual of putting the "earned" coins into a special box or piggy bank, and then talking regularly (not everyday obviously) about how much they had saved... and what their "target" thing to buy is at the end would help keep things on track. This also helps with the early maths skills, and showing that different coins are worth different amounts.

- Be really clear about what the types of tasks that you will be rewarding from the start, and build it into normal expected activities... the random use of "now, if you share that toy with your brother, you'll get a coin", or "if you brush your teeth right now, you'll get a coin" ends up with an expected pay-day for any type of co-operation.

- Give the "reward" as soon as possible, so have change in your purse/ wallet. Saying, "oh- I don't have any coins, I'll give you one later" ends up unravelling the thing a bit.

hope this helps.