Giving money to my sons

As my family has grown and morphed, I've transferred family wealth from parent to child in a variety of ways. We're currently in the process of transitioning to yet another scheme that will allow my sons to get their itchy hands on my hard-earned dollars, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this new scheme works.  (Early indications are hopeful).

Our early money lessons came in the form of "Mommy Dollars".  I just can't sing the praises of those Mommy-Dollar-Days enough.  In fact, just recently my 16- and 17-year old sons were sighing nostalgically and suggesting that maybe we ought to bring Mommy Dollars back.

I don't really think these guys actually want to carry purple, orange, and neon green currency around on their oh-so-cool persons, but I understand the nostalgia.  From their point of view, Mommy Dollars was almost as compelling as video games.  They got paid every day!  They got to carry tokens around in their hands!  They got nearly instant feedback on daily activities:  finish homework?  earn $20!  leave socks on the floor?  lose $5!  And the money that they got to carry around was like score cards, score cards that they could use to compare themselves to the day before, or to their brother.  They learned the importance of wallets, of not leaving money in your pockets when you put your pants down the laundry, and whenever they had the discipline to save instead of spend for a little while, they got their first taste of having wealth.  There's nothing like carrying several hundred dollars around in your pocket to make you feel like you're something, even if the dollars are the colors of popsicles and have the pictures of dogs and big sisters on them.

And from my more manipulative point of view, Mommy Dollars allowed me to retain control of their financial education.  Every dollar they earned, they earned from me.  Every dollar they spent, they spent with me or with each other.  This meant my money lessons couldn't be thwarted by well-intentioned relatives who would spontaneously shower the kids with real money.  It meant that I got to give them daily lessons in basic applied arithmetic, that I got to introduce them to important concepts like the difference between "rent" and "deposit".  Because of the "auctions" we held over deeply emotionally charged aspects of life (like, who gets to hold the TV remote this time, or who gets to put the napkins on the table, or who gets to wear the Bling Watch --- meaningful stuff, here!), they learned a healthy life-long appreciation for how easy it is to get carried away in financial bidding.

Eventually, though, the larger world beckoned, and Mommy Dollars declined in value.  So we switched away from our nightly payment of Mommy Dollar earnings, and moved to a weekly allowance of US dollars.

But the financial lessons also progressed to a new level.  For the past year or so, the boys have had to keep an "allowance journal", each week writing down three things:

• Where their past money actually went in the previous week.
• What they plan to do with their next allowance for the upcoming week.
• Their current savings balance.

That's all: reflection, anticipation, and a tally. In the "plan/anticipation" category, I've required them to be specific: more than saying "give $1, save $2, spend $2", I want to know what they think they might spend the money on. (And oh, yeah, my sons rock an allowance of $5/week. Because I am MiserMom, and that's all they're gonna get from me.)

Needless to say, the allowance journal is not as much fun as Mommy Dollars. But the boys really have learned a lot from it. J-son is the impulse spender; he's the one most likely to vow to save all his money, and then to blow it all a half-hour after it gets into his hands.  He'll even ask me to hold it for him so he doesn't get tempted . . . and then an hour later, he comes back to me to ask for the money so he can go to the convenience store with his friends.  He hasn't curbed his impulses at all, but the weekly practice of reflecting on his impulses has started to convince him that "just this once" isn't really just once.  He can laugh along with me when he says, "I just need this one more pair of shoes, and then I won't need to buy anything more".  Because "just this once" is really "just this hundred times" with him, and now he knows it.

Especially now that he has a paying job (working for his boxing coach),  J-son is getting savvier about putting fences around his money so that he's less tempted to spend it.  For example, now that he has a checking account with a debit card, and now that his debit card has gotten wear and tear from some serious action for the past few months, he's asked me to file away his debit card in my sewing room for him.  

And N-son?  He's not at all as drawn to hitting the stores.  He's steadily split his allowance between charity, saving, and a pittance of candy money, and so even without an outside paying job, he's managed to accumulate a few hundred dollars in his savings account.  He doesn't like keeping track of his money, which meant that one day this month he woke up to discover what he hadn't realized before: he's rich.   Having actual wealth is a motivator, that's for sure.  N-son had been a bit (well, more than a bit) jealous of all of J-son's toys . . . but, dang, N-son's got the bucks.  That's a cure for jealousy, right there.

But, as with Mommy Dollars, so with Allowance Journals.  Lessons have already been learned, and new lessons beckon.

We are moving into a new realm of wealth transfer:  "Recognize Problems and Propose Solutions".  (Shoot; I really need to come up with a better name for this system;  RPaPS is a miserable acronym).  

But this post is long enough.  I'll think of a better name for this baby and write more later.

Money 201: Intermediate Allowance

The purpose of an allowance, so the experts say, is to teach our children lessons about handling money.  This purpose I approve of, it goes without saying.

In fact, as a professor at heart, I have come to construct a sort of allowance syllabus (in my own head), complete with learning goals and feedback mechanisms.  I loved Mommy Dollars as a kind of "Intro Allowance" course; it gave my students children a low-stakes way to play with money.  They got lots of practice with simple arithmetic, for one thing.  They also developed a vocabulary of commerce: for example learning the difference between "deposit"and "rent", or between "deposit" and "balance".  And it taught them a few lessons a bit higher in Bloom's taxonomy of knowledge, too, when they discovered for themselves that winning an auction can actually kind of suck.

But pink, purple, and yellow dollars are valuable for only so long.  As the boys have gotten older, they have graduated from Mommy Dollars and are finally ready to matriculate into "Intermediate Allowance".

The amount of allowance I give the boys is designed to keep them as close as I can to the critical point (they actually have to think about what they spend) without dipping down into the "Dad throws random money at them" level of deprivation.

For, my husband is not a disciple of the "allowance as life lesson" school.  He throws money at the boys because of silly reasons like "well, they didn't have any money".  Or because "well, they were going  out with their friends, and I thought they ought to have money".  Or because, "well, they did some chores [picked up sticks from the front yard], so I gave them $4."  And how the heck are the boys going to learn to deal with the future reality of a scheduled pay day if money just rains down on them randomly now?

For this reason, I set the level of their allowance at $5/week.  Each.  These boys, as far as I'm concerned, are beyond wealthy at this level, and usually (but not always) this means that I can convince my husband not to subvert the lesson plan.

Because here's the lesson plan that goes with Miser-Mom-University's Money 201: Intermediate Allowance.  It's the "know thyself" portion of allowance, a crucial aspect of financial management that many adults miss out on.  Every week, before the boys get their next allowance, they have to  write these three things in their Allowance Journal:

1. Where their past money actually went in the previous week.
2. What they plan to do with their next allowance for the upcoming week.
3. Their current savings balance.

That's all they have to do:  reflect, plan, and tally.  Then they get their money.

N-son's Allowance Journal

I don't have any restrictions on what the boys spend (or plan to spend) their money on, but I will make gentle suggestions.  For example, I always encourage them to think about "give, save, and spend" categories, but I don't mandate that they do any of those.  I'll also remind them about upcoming events, like a carnival coming to town, that they might want to save up for.    And I try to get them to be specific about their plans ("what are you saving for?"  or "you said you're going to spend $4.50.  What do you think you're going to spend it on?")

The clincher comes the next week, when they compare what actually happened with what they thought would happen.  They have discovered (surprise, surprise) that they often can't remember where their money went.  I think that's a great thing to learn early in life, don't you?

Both boys have figured out on their own that if they truly want to save money, they need to give it to me for safe-keeping instead of hanging onto it themselves.  N-son has gone further; he also hands over the money he wants to give to church so he's not tempted to blow it elsewhere.

J-son, the more impulsive of the two boys, impressed the heck out of me with his resolve to save.  He decided that he needed a Lacrosse jacket so he could be truly a member of his team.  His dad and I agreed we'd pay for half of it, but only if he could save up the other half himself first.  And by the time that the order forms for the jackets came out, J-son had saved up an impressive $50, denying himself every single penny of spending for several months just to make sure he could afford his heart's desire.  His half of the jacket's cost came to $37; as soon as he paid it, he blew the other $13 on convenience store snacks.  Back to normal!

Learning to actually save money long-term: that lesson's not there yet.  (After many months, the boys' accumulated savings amount to less than $15 combined).  But they are practicing the dual habits of planning forward and of looking backward, and maybe that helpful habit will someday take hold.

Mommy dollars -- resurrected

I thought my teenaged boys had grown too old and sophisticated for Mommy Dollars.  "Mommy Dollars" sounds like something for little kids, right?  And the boys sure loved them when they were younger.  Fun.  Educational.  But not quite up to teenaged standards of cool, or so I thought.

But the boys -- particularly J-son -- keep asking for Mommy Dollars to come back.  He wants bling to stuff in his pockets.  My magpie child wants to be able to flash cash, even if the cash is pink and purple and orange.  And N-son would be happy to go along.

One disadvantage of a weekly allowance is that -- especially when you're an ADHD kid with impulse control issues -- that a week is, like, forever.  I thought moving from daily Mommy Dollars to weekly US Dollars would provide some valuable lessons in delayed gratification.  But I was premature.  Both boys need more immediate response and reward than the weekly salary.

So, to much hullabaloo, Mommy Dollars are back.

There's a slightly new design, to thwart any attempts to subvert the new system with old Mommy Dollars. But the design of the dollars still celebrates the members of our family.  The sisters are all proud to have their faces on valuable currency.  The dog is indifferent.

The Mommy Dollar system kicks in with a new set of ways to earn moolah (and also, to keep interruptions to a minimum, when to bug me for cash):

$1 feed dog and give him water and tell Mom right away
$2 make bed & clean bedroom floor before school
$5 make dinner (Mom must approve the menu)
$1-$3 write a letter to a relative

Bed-time checks:
$1 bring home school books (CA, Social studies, science)
$1 clean out backpack and hang it up
$1 bedroom floor clean
$1 brush and floss teeth

There are also, of course, ways to spend their cash:

$5 half-hour of TV time
$8 One US dollar. Redeemable only on Saturdays 5-6 p.m.
$1 Bedtime gummy vitamin
$2 (per mile) car ride to an appointment
$1 return phone late (every 10 minutes late, another dollar)
$1 buy back shoes/clothes you leave on the first floor
$8 leave light/radio until morning

I know we'll tweak this as we go along.  But I'm excited to have this fun new project swirling around in our home now.

Headlights, Guitars, and Mommy Dollars

This is a post about death and destruction.

The "death" part (just so I don't worry people unnecessarily) is the slow-yet-seemingly-inevitable demise of Mommy Dollars.  I started this system two years ago as a way of rewarding N-son and J-son for household chores, for practicing some much-needed arithmetic, and for occasionally penalizing undesirable behavior.  And Mommy Dollars have worked great for much longer than I thought they would.

But structurally, the Mommy Dollar system is losing its effectiveness.  One important aspect was quick feedback -- immediate reinforcement.  Back when, I paid the boys each night and they bought TV times or bedtime snacks on a daily basis.  But now, they're staying up late amusing themselves and so the bedtime routine leaves little time for tallying money.  The less often we do this, the less important this money seems.

There is also the matter of their "real" allowance.  For about a year, the boys have also gotten an incredibly stingy allowance -- $4 per week -- in true U.S. currency.  And as they grow older, this money has come to seem more real to them than the orange, pink, and purple bills I'd been doling out.  (Go figure).

The real money comes with strings attached.  They don't get the allowance if they lied or stole anything during the week -- I won't go into many details, except to say that that has been a helpful rule in our household.  They're expected to give some of their money elsewhere (to church or a charity) and also to put some into savings, so the weekly "take home" allowance is truly pitifully small.  What can I say?  There's a reason I call myself "Miser Mom".

The other important rule attached to their allowance is that each boy has to keep a minimum of $100 in his savings account to cover "emergencies".  If they don't meet this minimum, then I deposit the entire amount of the allowance in the savings account, and they can't spend any of it, not even the usual pitifully small amount.  The Emergency Fund is mandatory.

The purpose of the Emergency Fund is to cover destruction and loss.  When N-son smashed the ping pong paddles at my father's home, he bought new ones out of his own account.  When J-son used his umbrella as a snow shovel (and surprisingly, it broke), he bought a new umbrella out of his own savings.  The brother who has not recently destroyed or lost things gets to spend his allowance; the brother who has recently been irresponsible suffers several weeks of financial abstinence until his debt is paid.  This system seemed to work very well, even if (or maybe even because) it is taking over the place of Mommy Dollars.

But lately, we have run into careless destruction, completely accidental, on grander scales.  N-son swerved his bicycle into a friend's parked car and broke a headlight: $154 for the parts to replace it.  C-son was carrying his sister's guitar by the strap (not by the body), and the strap popped off, and the guitar smashed into the ground, snapping the head off:  $320 to replace it.  The Emergency Fund is no longer adequate.

The short term solution is that N-son and C-son each paid a portion of the damages while their dad and I paid the rest.  But these instances, I think, are part of a long term trend.  My boys will have access to more-and-more expensive things.  I have upped their allowance to a whopping $5 per week (are your kids jealous?), but their Emergency Fund minimum will rise by $2 per week for the foreseeable future.  The boys will be saving more money, but they'll also have more money to lose.  

A new financial era in our lives begins.  The phoenix, perhaps, rising from the ashes.
Mommy Dollars, RIP.

Mommy Dollar Update

Being far too cheap to pay my kids with real money, about a year and half ago I set up a system of "Mommy Dollars".  To my surprise, this system is still going strong at the home.  Here's J-son flashing his cash:

Our dog plays the role of George Dogington.
Older sisters get their faces on other bills.

And here he is, demonstrating how he maintains his account register at "BoMama" (Bank of Mama).

Tallying deposits and withdrawals in the BoMama.

I think the two secrets to the longevity of this program are (1) a detail-obsessed mom who doesn't mind keeping the system going and (2) a fee for bedtime snacks (this bribe keeps the boys coming back for more).  Hence, bedtime is financial up-date time for us.

J-son's Lava Lamp, left on at night.

Over the holidays, the boys each got decorative lights -- a Sponge Bob lamp for N-son, and a Lava lamp for the stylin' J-son.  (Total cost, $6 at yard sales).  They love the lamps so much they want to leave them on all night.  Their miserly mom, who bought the lamps for a song and a few bucks, hates the idea of leaving lights on.  How do we deal with this conflict of desires?

We deal with Mommy Dollars.  A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that running a 40-watt lava lamp all night costs about 4-8 cents, or about 4-8 Mommy Dollars.  If the boys leave their lamps on, I don't yell.  If I grit my teeth, at least I don't show it.  I just charge the boys their fee -- the decision is theirs.  Often, they opt to pay up.

Here's N-son.  On a recent snowy Saturday morning, he decided to pay not only the lamp fee, but also another $40 to watch a movie on TV with K-daughter.  Since he wasn't carrying that much cash on him, he visited the BoMama to withdraw funds.

Paying for Sponge Bob (the lamp and the TV time).

The boys are fairly wealthy for their age; they've both got between $300 and $400 in their BoMama accounts, which they saved up slowly over the course of a year.  Of course if you do the conversion rate in your head, remembering that $100 in Mommy Dollars gets $1 in US currency, the number isn't quite so impressive.

But Bill Gates would say the same thing about my own savings accounts, I'm sure.  

A morning with Mommy Dollars

We've settled into a comfortable routine with Mommy Dollars.  My boys have become both savers and spenders:  my older son has about $500 in his BoMama (Bank Of Mama) account, and the other has about $600.  Because the September MPR is 1.4%, this means the boys are liable to earn $7 to $8 dollars (that's U.S. dollars) for the month.

The main things the boys spend their money on nowadays are bedtime snacks, TV time, and late fees.  (Yesterday, while we were at the pet store, the beta fishes really tempted one son, though.)   But every once in a while, something new comes up.  On Tuesday, the boys started arguing over who gets to put the napkins on the table.

Oh, the napkins . . . (sigh).  Because we use personalized napkin rings, the person who puts the napkins on the table essentially decides where everyone sits.  This is a HUGE deal to my boys, so much so that when I first set up Mommy Dollars, I had a scheme where the boys rented a seat at the table for a week, just to stop arguments.  The system worked so well we've abandoned it . . . but obviously, it's time to reconsider.

At any rate, the boys were muttering to each other in low tones, hoping I couldn't hear the bickering.  Hah! Moms hear everything!  So I proposed an auction:  highest bidder gets to set the table.

• Son 1 immediately says, "$10".  
• Son 2 counters right away with "$20".  
• Son 1 comes back with "$30".  
• Son 2 now realizes something is wrong but says, "$50".  
• Son 1 is now torn . . . on the one hand, he doesn't want to pay that much, but on the other hand he doesn't want to lose a contest, so he says, "$100".  

Son 1 "wins" the auction.  And then he chickens out, because he knows that the money in his account is earning him more money.  He's decided he'd rather be rich.  He says, "Actually, I don't want to put the napkins on the table.  You can do it, brother.  I need to save my money."

I could have enforced the auction, but I think the lesson was learned.  Still, we're going back to renting seats at the table starting right now.  Not coincidentally, the boys were 5 minutes late out the door, so they each paid a $5 fine.

Mommy Dollars and BoMama

By popular demand (with a tip o' the hat to the excellent Get Rich Slowly blog), here's an update on Mommy Dollars.  I've written before about

• why I use Mommy Dollars (so I can teach my kids about finances without having spend-thrifts subvert my system);
• how I make the Mommy Dollars themselves;
• my original list of  the ways my boys can earn and spend Mommy Dollars;
• updates to that list (like auctions and fines);
• lessons my kids learned from the daily monetary negotiations.

Any economist will tell you that to make a local currency work, you have to make it more powerful at buying what people want than other kinds of currencies.  Now that we've been doing Mommy Dollars for nearly 9 months, these are the things that my boys still spend money on:

• TV time ($40 per hour); they buy this about once a week now.
• Fines for not cleaning up their messes (okay, that's not fun for them, but this is the most effective way I've found to change their behavior without constant nagging.  I just take their football out of my garden, store it in the trunk of my car, and make them pay $5 to get it back.)
• Surreptitiously competing with one another to see who has the most money.
• Getting extra library books out of the library.  (I allow them 2 books for free, and they pay me $2 for each book above that limit.  For some reason, this makes them want to take out MORE books, not FEWER books).
• Converting 100 Mommy Dollars to 1 US Dollar, and blowing it all at a yard sale.
• Investing in the Bo-Mama.
• Bedtime snacks.

This last item is a complete sell-out on my part, I know.  I'm not going to regale you with the long, convoluted story about how we got to this point of affairs, but I'll confess that I sell my boys 10 gummy-bears for $16 at bedtime.  If you can put aside your revulsion at the store-bought, processed, sugar-laden bribery of it all (sigh), I'll point out that these treats have the effect of ensuring that my kids pester me about Mommy Dollars each night.  (See the above note about what economists say).  And this, in turn, keeps accounts up-to-date, and it encourages the boys to earn extra money the next day so they can continue to get their snack each night.  

About 4 or 5 months after I introduced the Mommy Dollars themselves, I opened (with great fanfare) BoMama:  the "Bank of Mama".  This is how my boys get to invest their money.  They had to fill out a horrendously long and laborious (to them) form -- they had to write down their name, address, phone number, and birthday.  With a minimum deposit of $100 (Mommy Dollars, of course), they could open an account.  They earn interest at a Monthly Percentage Rate set by the banker (me), and that interest gets paid out in US dollars.  It's a great deal for them, but they're so young and impulsive that it's still hard for them to take advantage of it.  Which, of course, is why it's such a great learning experience. I'll post more on the BoMama if people seem to want to hear more details.  

The BoMama Account Register (click to enlarge).

The horrendously long, complicated form that the poor applicant has to fill out ALL BY HIMSELF.  (Click to enlarge).  

Learning from Mommy Dollars

Mommy Dollars have given me lots of chances to teach my boys about lots of things -- even more than about money and math.

This money has been a good way to talk about arithmetic in our daily lives (especially helpful because both of my boys struggle with addition).  The usual bedtime routine now is that before their bedtime story, I ask, "How much money do I owe you for today?"  They go through the calculations, adding up what they earned, subtracting fines or monies spent, and explain the total to me.

The next question I ask is, "How do you want that money?"  I didn't realize the first time I asked it what a good question it is -- and I've seen how helpful it is for them to practice.  I'll ask, "Okay, how do you want that $38?"  and an answer will come back, "Three tens . . . no, wait!  One twenty, one ten . . . one five  . . . (very long pause) . . . and three ones."

I knew that Mommy Dollars would give us a lot of chances to practice mathematics, and also that it would give me a chance to discuss kid-level financial habits (like saving up for bigger things you want by foregoing smaller things).   I hadn't realized, though, how much it would help us learn so many other skills in life.

The boys love Mommy Dollars.  In fact, they both asked for wallets for Christmas, so they'd have a grown-up way of carrying their money around.  My older son loves flashing his money at anybody who will look at it.  (My husband has fished that wallet out of the laundry countless times since -- and breaking that habit is a good lesson for the boys to be learning early).

The auctions I mentioned in my last post are another example of learning new behaviors:  I think we've had maybe 3 or 4 auctions this past year.  By now, if there's a disagreement over who gets to do something, all I have to do is offer an auction, and the boys find another way to work things out.

In an ironic twist, one of the arguments I still intervene in regularly is who gets to make breakfast.  I almost never tell the boys they have to cook -- they both beg to be allowed to cook (and get the money that comes from their efforts).  So, yes, my boys make pancakes and waffles and oatmeal and muffins for me.  And I pay them 15 cents (I mean, 15 Mommy Dollars) each time.

I've learned to assign some strategic fines.  I used to nag, point at the clock, and order the boys around so I could get them out of the house on time in the morning.  But after the mommy dollars kicked in, I announced a new policy:  I wouldn't keep reminding them of the time, but if they didn't leave for school by 8:20,  they'd be charged $1 each minute until they left.  For a few days in a row I collected small amounts of money:  $5, $2, $7.  Now all I have to do is say casually, "Boys, it's 8:10", and they go into a frenzy to get themselves ready.  (Often, they remind themselves of how much time they have left, and I don't have to say anything).  I haven't had to nag OR collect money in a long time.

It's not a perfect system.  The boys often tell me in the morning they will want to make dinner, but when evening rolls around, they discover they'd rather keep playing.  And their bedroom is still usually a disaster-zone, in spite of the huge payment they could earn for cleaning it.

Still, overall I am thrilled at how this has spilled into so many parts of our lives.  About a month ago, my younger son showed me the book he'd checked out of the school library that day: a children's cookbook. On his own, he chose a recipe (sausage popovers) and made dinner for the whole family by himself.  That's not bad for an easily-distracted, 11-year-old boy.   I think we're on to something.

More ways to spend Mommy Dollars

When my husband saw the list of ways to earn and spend Mommy Dollars (see June 1), he needled me about charging $40 for watching TV.  But the boys were both ecstatic -- they handed over the money and got ready to run down to the basement to watch.

Then they came back upstairs and asked me, "Who gets to hold the remote?"  It was something that they'd both argued over regularly, trying to keep the fights under the radar of their parents, but not always succeeding.  I was really getting sick of being the referee.

So thinking quickly, I said, "We'll have an auction.  Highest bidder holds the remote."  Bidding started at $1 and rose slowly until finally the older brother won the auction at $100.  The younger brother stomped off, but didn't argue.

We've had a few more auctions since then -- the funniest one was over what we call "the bling watch".  Again, the oldest son won the right to wear the watch for one day, and again, the winning bid was $100.  After he won the bid, he asked me, "Wait.  Is this a boy's watch or a girl's watch?"  "You won the bid," I answered, "you tell me".

He looked at the watch carefully.  "It's covered in jewels," he said.  "DEFINITELY a boy's watch".

The next day, the boys started debating who got to rent that watch today.  I mentioned an auction.  My older son paused, felt his wallet, turned to the younger and asked, "How about we take turns instead?"

*****
Nowadays, when the kids start fighting over something, the mention of an auction will usually get them to figure out a way to share that doesn't involve paying up.  That's been a really nice side-effect of the Mommy Dollars.

And when my husband saw that the boys not only gladly paid $40 each to watch TV, but voluntarily chipped in $100 extra to hold the remote, he stopped teasing me about how much I charge.

The Mommy Dollar Value Chart

When I rolled out Mommy Dollars, I posted a chart (below) on the bulletin board with lots of ways to earn and spend the new money.  The boys checked it constantly.  I can't match the formatting here in the blog -- it was hand-written.  Since then, we've added to this system, but it's probably helpful to others to see where we started.

The Mommy Dollar Value Chart
(All salaries and prices are subject to change).

Things to buy, rent, and spend your money on:

40 - TV time
50 - go out for ice cream
10 - 10-minute sewing lesson
20 - 10-minute dog-walking lesson
  2 -  rent a watch ($50 deposit)
  2 -  extra library books (beyond the first 2)
  1 - rent a normal seat at the dining room table (one week)
  5 - rent a special seat at the dining room table  (one week)
100 - rent Mom's seat at the dining room table (one week)
200 - beta fish
  1 - play Othello with Mom

Ways to earn salaries and commissions*
     * when Mama approves

20 - behave for the sitter/finish homework
  1 - take out compost (or trash, or recycling)
  5 - feed dog
10 - pick up dog poop
15 - make breakfast
25 - make dinner
  5 - empty dishwasher
30 - clean and vacuum bedroom
300 - beat Mom at Othello

My boys can trade US currency with Mommy dollars at rates that I set.  I am in charge.  I set the rates.  They can trade 100 Mommy dollars for 1 US dollar.  Going backwards, they can trade 1 US dollar to get 50 Mommy dollars.  This not only teaches them about exchange rates (for those days when they become international travelers), but it also makes it hard for them to swap birthday money for TV time.

I think this list is pretty funny, actually.  I've been surprised at how often my boys have come to me with a $10 bill (mommy money) asking for sewing lessons -- I don't think I could have convinced them that sewing is fun before this, but now that they have to pay for it themselves, they think they're getting a great deal.

We also have much less arguing about who sits where at the table -- the boys rent their seat at the beginning of the week, and then they own their spots until the next weekend.

And for the record, I almost always beat the pants off of them at Othello, but once -- just once -- my oldest son beat me.  And I paid up.

Making (Mommy) Money

Here's a how-to post: how I make the Mommy dollars.  In a new Word document, I set the page to "Landscape" (you can do that from the File; Page Set-Up; Orientation) series of buttons.  I make the margins as small as possible (about .5" on each side).  I insert a table with 2 columns and 4 rows, and "auto fit to window" to make the cells as large as possible.

Across the top and bottom of each cell, I write the amount of the bill three times:
                        "5     Five Mommy Dollars     5"
in a large font (the numbers in 22 point font, and the words in 18 point -- but really, use whatever looks good).  In the middle of each bill, I stick pictures of family members.  For us, the one-dollar bill has our dog's face; the 5/10/20 bills feature the boy's sisters, and the 100-dollar bill has me and my husband.  To each side of the picture, I add in clip-art about things that person (or dog) loves:  soccer or knitting or bones.

One of the nice things about making your own money is that if you're not great with computers, you can do this by cutting and pasting -- literally.  You could make up a sheet of hand-drawn money, gluing on some pictures, and then just photocopy that sheet.

I design one sheet for each kind of money -- for example, one sheet has eight $10 bills.  Then I print out that master sheet onto brightly colored paper, and cut the bills apart.

Mommy Dollars 101

I pay my boys in "Mommy Dollars".

This isn't a new idea; I've seen other websites talking about this since I started.  I owe my own personal inspiration for the system, in fact, to my sister, who uses a version of "teacher dollars" in her seventh-grade classroom in a small town in New York.

The basic idea is that I print my own currency (I'll describe how in a separate post); I make a list of things my boys can (or must) do to earn money, and I make a list of things they can spend money on.  This last is important -- economists will tell you that a currency gets used only if it seems to have more value to people than other currencies.

Now that I've started this, I've discovered a lot of reasons to love this system, and I'll describe many of those in later posts.  But here's a big miser-mom reason to love it: other people can't thwart or undermine it easily.

What do I mean by that?  With my older daughters, I could give them a careful, thrifty allowance and try to encourage them to budget.  But other relatives or friends would give them money that made saving or budgeting unnecessary.  Especially for children whose parents are in separate houses, this question of how much is a reasonable allowance is tough when one parent says, "$15 per month" and the other says "$20 per week".   And even if nobody is handing my children cash, playground bragging about allowances can leave kids who thought they were making a lot of money realizing that there are other households where they might have gotten a better deal.

Well, my kids can brag that they get $5 just to feed the dog, or $1 to take out the trash, and no other kid can top that.  And at the other extreme, no amount of U.S. money is going to buy my kids TV time or extra library privileges -- they have to save up their mommy dollars themselves.  So they're learning a lot about how to handle money this way, and that is a skill that a miser-mom loves.