Rushedlife’s Weblog

I swear to God that there isn’t an hour that passes in the day when one of my children aren’t harping on me to go out and buy them something.  I have Thomas the Train and Dinosaurs coming out my ears and quite honestly I can’t afford it any longer.  I have a four year old and five year old.  I have created monsters.  I admit that I have bought even little things in the past to avoid the store time meltdowns.  It is that or be viewed by other onlookers as the meanest mom in the world for simply saying no.  No, NO, NOOOOOOOO!  So now what am I to do?  I made this bed that I can’t afford the sheets for any longer.  Here is the solution at our house.  We are setting up chore charts.  I don’t think that I am ready yet to give my children an allowance, but they are definitely old enough to help out with chores.  I bought a set of charts at Staples and will be starting them on Monday.  I get to fill in what they should be doing under four categories and for each star they get covered I will give them a quarter to put in their jar.  At the end of the month, we will count quarters change them in for dollars and chose at that time to put the money in the bank to save or they can go spend it and start all over again.  Hopefully this will help them see that if they save they can get something bigger and if they spend it they will have to build up their money again.  I would also like them to put some money aside to buy a toy for someone else at Christmas.  I know that essentially that this is still my money being spent, but from now one for little toys and whatnot, they will have to spend out of their own money because then they earned it.  People are talking about this at The Parent bloggers Network http://blog.parentbloggers.com/ and also at this Capital One Website: http://www.capitalone.com/financialeducation/cbt/launcher.htm.  Check out this cool tool they have created to help parents raise kids who are money wise.