Live simply, stay sane. Life hacks for home managers.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As I mentioned yesterday, we’ve started giving our three-year-old daughter an allowance in exchange for simple household chores.

Photo by Michele Catalano

I know that $2.45 weekly isn’t going to buy much more than M&Ms or a bouncy ball. But that’s not the point. The point is, we want our kids to start learning how to manage money early.

I’m a Dave Ramsey-ite, but this idea is not trademarked by him. The basic concept of giving, saving, and spending has been around for generations, and we want to keep it that way in our family. The sooner our children understand that our money is given to us by God, and that out of thankfulness, we give some of it back, the easier it will become a lifelong habit.

Saving money likewise requires discipline, and to practice the art of paying yourself first, even from the 17 nickels like we did last week, will reap benefits that far outweigh whatever could be bought with 1.7 coins.

So when we give our daughter her allowance (or commission, or whatever you want to call it), we count the stickers on her chore chart, and then count out the same amount of nickels. We then tell her how much goes into the giving jar, and how much goes into the saving jar. The rest goes into the spending jar.

Her spending money can go towards whatever she wants. That means that yes, if she’s in the grocery cart and she wants those gummy bears, she can buy them if she has enough money. But it comes out of her spending jar. (A side note: Of course we take care of her needs, and yes, we buy her gifts from time to time. Not a lot, but we aren’t expecting our three-year-old to fend for herself financially. That would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?)

We haven’t used this system long enough to really see the longer-term benefits, but friends of ours who use this method have nothing but good things to say.

There’s a guy in his mid-30s from our church back in the States who bought his family’s Suburban with 100% cash from his childhood allowance. We don’t really have those kind of expectations for her giving and spending goals, but again, the account balance is not the point. The point is cultivating a habit in preschool that’s hard for grown adults to do. Hopefully, her heart will follow.

Isn’t that a great gift to give your kids? It really is all about changing your family tree, one small thing at a time.

How do you work out money with your kids?

We recently started a regular chore routine with our three-year-old. Thanks to your input, we came up with a reasonable list of things, and she’s slowly starting to accomplish them on her own.

Photo by Sabbah

I couldn’t find a chore chart I liked on the internet, so I created my own. It’s very simple, and the original idea came from a good friend of mine (hi, Ali!). Here’s a screenshot (click to enlarge):

The chores we’ve started with are:

• help make my bed
• empty silverware from the dishwasher
• take my dishes to the kitchen (after breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and
• pick up my toys (before her quiet time and before her bed time)

When she accomplishes a task, she gets a sticker in the alloted square for that day. At the end of the week, we count up her stickers. For every sticker, she gets a nickel (well, this country’s equivalent of a nickel).

She has three jars to put her money - one for giving, one for saving, and one for spending. 10 percent goes into each of the first two, and the remaining 80 percent goes into her spending jar. If she does every single chore for every single day (which she has yet to do), she’d earn $2.45 a week. That’s $127.45 for the year. 80 percent of that is $101.96. Not bad spending money for a three-year-old, I’d say. (More about the “why” behind our reward system tomorrow.)

So far, this system is working beautifully. She’s excited to do her chores because she likes getting to pick out which sticker she puts on her chart, and at the end of the week, we count out each nickel one by one. For the concrete, visual processors that preschoolers are, the pile of coins is thrilling.

I’ve made a generic Preschool Chore Chart for you to download for free. I tried to include as many typical chores a preschooler might have around the house, but if you don’t see ones you’d like, you can easily add your own. Download the Chore Chart here. And as always, I welcome any feedback!

What do your kids do around the house? Do you have a reward system?

Green is the new jeans-and-flip-flops these days. As in, it’s the norm to be a mom who’s environmentally-conscious, yet not wear corn rolls and insist on not showering until global warming ends. You’re no longer in the minority when you care about toxins in plastic or reducing waste. It’s just common sense.

Photo by *sean

I personally have a lot to learn. All the talk going around about carbon footprints and household product chemicals can be really confusing. For me, anyway.

I recently found Ideal Bite. It’s a site dedicated to providing easy-to-understand advice about everyday things people can do to positively impact the environment. Their motto is “a sassier shade of green.” Isn’t that cute?

I just subscribed to Ideal Bite’s Daily Tip. They’re short, they’re witty, and they’re useful. And they’re free! Woo-hoo for that.

I seriously didn’t need one more thing added to my in-box, but I like that I can peruse their daily tip, archive it if it’s helpful (thank you, Gmail!), or delete it and move on if it’s not. They tend to be about frugality and health while focusing on eco-savvyness (yes, I just made up that word).  They obviously have advertisers around their content, but if you can get past that, there really is some good content.

Here are a few examples:

• If you think you’re all out, cut the toothpaste tube in half - you’ll be surprised how much is left.

• Add a little water to your almost-empty shampoo or conditioner bottles, and you can use them a few more times.

• Did you know that staples are recyclable? That means you don’t need to remove them before you throw your paper in the recycling bin.

• Turn off your car if you’re going to be idling longer than a minute (like when you’re waiting to pick up your kids from school). It uses less gas to turn on and off your car than it does to idle. It’s estimated that Americans use 2 billion gallons of fuel while idling each year - that’s $100 in gas per driver per year.

I love this little snippet from their “about” page:

Ideal Bite offers bite-sized ideas for light green living – ideas for real people who lead busy lives and want to make small changes that add up to big results. … The secret sauce? A spoonful of “incremental environmentalism” combined with a keeping-it-real attitude.

I think I’m going to use that phraseology about myself now, kinda like calling myself “chewy granola.” I’m light green.

So I recommend signing up for Ideal Bite’s Daily Tip. It works for me!