brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Greetings, here is the situation. My dd badly wants a set of playmobil that is a hospital. She has lots of playmobil, but saw this one recently and now that is all she talks about. So, I told her that she can earn money by doing some work and then she can decide what to do with the money. So, I came up with three ideas so far, so of course it will take her a LONG time to gather enough money. I refuse to pay for things like setting the table, cleaning up the play room and putting all the toys away, and making her bedroom. These are simple required duties, in my view. So, can anyone give me suggestions as to what they child can earn some money? By the way, she is 5 1/2yo. Thanks. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thescrappyhomeschooler Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 When my six yr. old ds wants to earn extra money, I also make him do things outside of his regular chores. Some things he does: Help clean out the car Carry things up and down stairs for me Empty the dishwasher (but our cupboards are low, so he can reach) Vacuum a room Dust a room Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snickerdoodle Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 At that age I ask them to earn half the amount and I will chip in the other half. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annie Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Can she fold towels and wash cloths and separate socks and underwear by family member? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 I did not think o the dishwasher. I think those are good. Any ideas how much to pay for? Thanks. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 Can she fold towels and wash cloths and separate socks and underwear by family member? That's a good idea. She can fold and certainly can separate socks and underwear. Thanks for the ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rebecca VA Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 (edited) Sweeping the driveway and sidewalk, pulling weeds, cleaning a bathroom (with vinegar and water, not commercial products), raking leaves, entertaining a younger child on a special occasion, doing a school-related task that is above and beyond the norm (for example, extra workbook pages, extra piano practice, etc.). I would not make her wait too long to earn her hospital. Give her a generous wage, or chip in half-and-half with her -- don't make this too painful for her. Oh, and I'd work alongside her the first few times. Talk to her, give her pointers on how to do a great job, sing silly songs, make it a fun experience. You want to teach her to enjoy honest work. Edited March 15, 2011 by Rebecca VA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paige Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Does she have younger siblings? I sometimes pay my olders quarters to occupy the youngest. I also have them do things like scrubbing the baseboards and dusting blinds when they want to earn money. I am cheap- they rarely get paid more than a few quarters a job. My oldest gets paid about $7 a week if he cleans up the dog poop in the yard 4-5 times a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 Does she have younger siblings? I sometimes pay my olders quarters to occupy the youngest. I also have them do things like scrubbing the baseboards and dusting blinds when they want to earn money. I am cheap- they rarely get paid more than a few quarters a job. My oldest gets paid about $7 a week if he cleans up the dog poop in the yard 4-5 times a week. Indeed she does have a baby brother. I am cheap too, and probably worse than some people. For playing with the baby I think it is part of the daily life. However, there are times that I ask her to help out with him, so that will be something to get a quarter or so for. Also, once we have our garden going, she will have more work to do, such as weeding, watering, harvesting, etc. She is a good helper, so I will try to be generous. No dogs to pick up poop. Oh, and when we have strawberries, she can help out with the jam making.... lots of work lined up. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peek a Boo Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 make labels [for household items: copying things like forks, plates, cups, pots, bowls, window, door, bathroom, etc onto post its and having them place on appropriate item. can do in foreign language too.] wash windows scrub walls scrub floors [i often give my 3 younger guys 3 soapy washrags and an eye patch and send them in to 'swab the deck' w/ many Arrrs! and "me mateys" lol...] sort coins [from change jar] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duckens Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 At that age, she can do dusting and (maybe) vacuuming. She can use Windex and wash mirrors and windows. Spring is coming, and you can send her out in the yard to pick up trash or sticks. In our household, I pay dd4 for schoolwork. I know this is controversial, but it works as a motivator for work for her. It also defuses whining when she wants to purchase stuff for which Loverboy and I don't want to pay. I simply tell her that she can spend her money on these items. She has saved for and purchased several bigger toys in this way. --For Kindergarten level work, she is paid 5 cents/lesson or page. First grade will be 6 cents. --She gets a 25 cent bonus if she finishes all of the work that I lay out for the day (10 lessons, which we do occasionally finish, but I don't push because...uh...she's 4). --Since she is learning to read, she has BOB books and some little readers through her lessons. If she reads these to 5 people (Mom, Dad, Baby C, the cats, and an outside friend or family member), she also earns 25 cents. --We have no allowance in our household. Think long and hard before you institute a money for schoolwork system. I don't know if you have older/other children that will need to be compensated for bookwork, too. And if you institute this system, you may never be able to eliminate it if you decide you don't like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenlaw31 Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 I use Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Junior for my kids. It is amazing how well it works. They have chores and get paid allowance. Then they have to divide it up into 3 envelopes. One for tithe, spending $, and savings. The neat thing about the savings is they have a chart that they write what they want to buy with it. It is usually something big that will take them a few weeks to save up for. They decide how much they want to put away each week for that item and estimate how long before they should have enough to get it. A regular chore chart didn't work for us, but this system does. It has been a few months and the kids are still going strong. I don't have to remind them about their chores, they do them automatically and check off the list themselves. I do however include things like making bed, and cleaning room in their $$. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RahRah Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 DS6 gets an allowance - $5 a week for doing his chores M-F (he can use weekend days to make up any day he might miss during his five day expectation). When he wants to earn more money, we usually have a list we'll come up with.....the last time he wanted a playmobil set, the list included: Help clean out the car - $1 Organize toys in bins (they get disorganized) - $3 Dust (one room) - $1 Vacuum (one room) - $1 Help cook dinner - $1 Sweep garage (it's big) - $2 Help fold laundry (per load) - $1 Put folded laundry in bedrooms on beds - $1 What we do is have him save up half, then we'll kick in the other half. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 I use Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Junior for my kids. It is amazing how well it works. They have chores and get paid allowance. Then they have to divide it up into 3 envelopes. One for tithe, spending $, and savings. The neat thing about the savings is they have a chart that they write what they want to buy with it. It is usually something big that will take them a few weeks to save up for. They decide how much they want to put away each week for that item and estimate how long before they should have enough to get it. A regular chore chart didn't work for us, but this system does. It has been a few months and the kids are still going strong. I don't have to remind them about their chores, they do them automatically and check off the list themselves. I do however include things like making bed, and cleaning room in their $$. I will look into that book. I like the idea of saving half, so they start a sense of financial responsibility early one. Thank you for the help. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 DS6 gets an allowance - $5 a week for doing his chores M-F (he can use weekend days to make up any day he might miss during his five day expectation). I think we may have to establish an allowance too. Does your child looses the privilege if, say, he decides to really slack of of his chores? Thanks. Be well Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RahRah Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 I think we may have to establish an allowance too. Does your child looses the privilege if, say, he decides to really slack of of his chores? Thanks. Be well Miriam If he doesn't do his chores at least five days in a week, he loses his entire allowance - he started on the idea, well, I did 3 days, so can't I have $3....nope, sorry bud, allowance = doing chores all 5 days you need to, to get it! It was due to that, that we allow the seven days time to get in five days of chores - we let him make-up days in the same week on the weekend, if he's slacked off a bit.....a compromise, ya know...and one he negotiated for, and negotiated well. Since that, he hasn't pushed the boundary, so we haven't had to amp-up the consequence...but if he did, yeah, we'd take a privilege away if needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K&Rs Mom Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Here they have everyday chores (like dishwashing & toy pickup), and there are "big" chores that earn them $1 - scrub out bathtub, vacuum van (when it's warm enough outside), vacuum stairs, dusting a room with lots of parts.... They only get $1.25 a week for allowance, so that extra dollar is a lot to them. We've also done the save half & we'll pay the other half deal if it's something really big. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MomOfOneFunOne Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 I don't know how well this idea will work with a 5 year old but when my daughter was 8 or 9 we started a more entrepreneurial idea with her. No allowance for her regular chores, she has to do them as a contributing member of the family. She can, however, offer to do extra jobs and propose a dollar value for the job. We can accept, deny, or negotiate. Ditto the other way. When I want the baseboards scrubbed or the fridge detailed, I offer the job and the dollar value. She can accept or decline. Usually I already know what I'm willing to pay so there is very little room to negotiate. and I never pay for incomplete work. If she accepts a job but finds out it's more work than she wanted or got side-tracked and didn't finish: no moolah. I drive a harder bargain than her dad, to be sure. She gets money for things like . . . any of my chores I don't feel like doing (but she rarely feels like doing them either), picking up walnuts, stacking wood, detailing the fridge/freezer, baseboards, molding, hauling . . . really, she's only limited by her imagination and just a few aforementioned rules. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyJoy Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 The jobs my parents let me do for money at that age were: pick up rocks out of the vegetable garden follow dad around the yard as he dug up dandelions and gather them in a bucket pick up unripe/smashed fruit from under the fruit trees sweep the porch or patio hose down/scrub patio furniture rinse/sort/bag my family's aluminum cans collect aluminum cans when we were walking around town clean my little sister's room Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynn Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 cleaning baseboards is an extra paying job in our house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hellen Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Check Ebay and craigslist often for a used one so she doesn't have to earn such a giant amount of money. My son is saving for the Playmobil train which is even more expensive than the hospital. I don't like paying for chores so his source of income right now is a token system we set up for watching tv. He gets four tokens per day and any unused tokens are traded for cash. We set it up as a tv regulation thing but it has worked out as a great moneymaker for him. The added bonus is that there are no more fights about tv watching. He's a natural saver. I don't think it would work as well with other personalities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brasilmom Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 Check Ebay and craigslist often for a used one so she doesn't have to earn such a giant amount of money. My son is saving for the Playmobil train which is even more expensive than the hospital. I don't like paying for chores so his source of income right now is a token system we set up for watching tv. He gets four tokens per day and any unused tokens are traded for cash. We set it up as a tv regulation thing but it has worked out as a great moneymaker for him. The added bonus is that there are no more fights about tv watching. He's a natural saver. I don't think it would work as well with other personalities. Wow, what a great idea. I may give that a try. I am hesitant about for chores, as one must make contributions to the living space. I may place an allowance, but need to get a better idea on it all. The other thought I had was to, once summer is here, we normally go pick strawberry to make jam for the year. It is not that bad, but if she helps me, I can pay her for that. Then, we can make jam and she can get part of her pay in the form of jam and sell to friends and family. I posed the idea to her and she was excited about it. She can get more money that way. If she helps me with the garden I can also entertain the idea of having her helping me with canning, say, jalapeños, pickles, and the such and she can sell few jars. I think she may like that idea a lot. Now all back to the drawing board. Miriam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nestof3 Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Baseboard cleaning. Give her a pot of warm water, sponge, a toothbrush and a little towel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitten18 Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 I'm getting lots of great ideas here! My kids love to clean the painted woodwork, baseboards, door frames, doors around handles, window sills, stair railing, etc. I also sometimes pay DD $1 to unload the dishwasher. I have a completely irrational hatred of unloading the dishwasher.;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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