Family Economy Update

We were doing Saturday morning jobs and I got some great pictures of the kids working hard and so we thought now would be a good time for a family economy update.

Overall, we still love the family economy and it works really well for our family. For me, the best part is that I can just tell the kids that if they want something, they can earn money and buy it for themselves. It is still just Lydia and Austin, since Caleb is too young. Lydia can earn $7 a week and Austin can ear $5. If they did their jobs each week, they would have so much money. We just bumped the amount Shantel and I get for personal spending from $10 to $20 and they both earn more than that if they do all their jobs. Family economy has four things for each of the kids. Lydia has morning (brush teeth, get dressed etc.), Zone (currently Mud room for Lydia), Piano and Book of Mormon. Austin has morning, Upstart (preschool), Zone (currently the upstairs hall), and reading.

I would say they do their jobs every day and earn the full money about once a month. Twice a month they earn partial (Lydia at $1 a day and Austin at $0.50 per day) and then one week a month they usually earn $0. Although they both go in waves of doing better or worse. Overall, I think it works and they only earn money when they work for it.

The other two parts that we consider part of the family economy are Saturday jobs and AJD's (After dinner jobs).

After dinner jobs have been going really well. Right now Lydia is responsible for sweeping and Austin is responsible for clearing off the table. They both do a good job and usually do their job without too much complaining.

For a while we moved jobs from Saturday to Monday, but it really disrupted the homeschool day, plus I was not there to help and so we moved it back to Saturday and I think it works much better. The kids are not always happy to do it (in fact I think they still dread it), however, it helps so much. They do a good job cleaning their room. Then Austin is responsible to clean the kids bathroom and Lydia is responsible for cleaning our toilet and the floor in our bathroom. It is so nice and they both do a good job. We try and teach them how to do it and they learn really well.

I grabbed a few pictures the other day of them doing Saturday jobs. I hope we can continue to teach them the importance of work.

Lydia cleaning the toilet.

The boys working on vacuuming.