Suggestions for your success at raising Money Smart Kids

1. Be consistent.  Teaching, training and disciplining are processes that require your time, effort and consistency.   Once you have established an allowance amount and frequency, add it to your family budget and pay it as you would any other bill—consistently and on time.  Follow through with rewards and penalties that you have established.
2. Do not tie allowance to chores.  The primary purpose of an allowance is to help children learn to handle finances.  Being part of a family entails responsibilities, benefits and rewards.  Require your children to do household chores without being paid, such as washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, dusting and gardening.  These help provide for everyone’s needs.  They should be required to do more than just clean up after themselves.  They benefit by having food, shelter, clothing, relationship and an allowance.   If you desire, tie your child’s performance of completing regular chores to entertainment privileges such as television time, having a friend over, playing video games or computer.  Make a chart to keep track of chores or character traits that you wish to stress and reinforce in your child’s life.
3. Give opportunities to earn extra money inside and outside the home, beyond their family responsibilities.  These can teach a good work ethic and the concept that work equals pay.  Post jobs that are age-specific and be clear about what is expected.  Pay only for quality work, done quickly and well.  Require that regular chores be completed first.  Pay by the job, not the hour and do not pay for slack, slow or sloppy work.  Allow them to watch you do the job at least once before you ask them to do it alone.  Inspect the work before you pay, but pay promptly.
4. Be sure that allowances do not discourage family involvement or encourage laziness.  Children’s allowances should be enough to look forward to, but not enough to meet all their wants so they have no need for extra jobs.  Review and adjust allowances from time to time.  Eventually, you should wean your children off of allowances and on to their own earned income.  Therefore, allowances should not keep pace (percentage-wise) with their budgets.
5. Allow your children to get involved in family finances.  You will likely see that they are understanding and willing to help make things work.  Teach them that a budget is all about choices, we can have most anything, but it will require doing without some other things.  Give them the appropriate tools that they need to budget their own finances, such as the Money-smart Kids Budget Bank or Kids’ Debit Card.   Budgeting applies to time, talents, and abilities as well.  Allow your late-teens to have their own checking and savings account, a credit card (with a low maximum) and day-planners while under your care so that they can learn their proper use.     
6. Take each individual child into consideration—their strengths, weaknesses, abilities and problems.  On the other hand, personality differences or behavior issues are not valid excuses for violating God’s laws or principles.