Kids and money
Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash
In today’s episode we’re discussing how we handle chores and allowance and we’ll highlighting some numbers from a 2021 survey on allowance. Can you guess what the most lucrative chore is?
During this episode we’ll discuss:
Our philosophies on giving kids money
Why or why aren’t our kid’s allowance tied to chores
How much allowance our kids get
Any restrictions we have place on how our kids spend their money
And whether we use any apps or other tools to help manage our children’s money
Resources mentioned in the podcast:
If you like what you heard, please consider subscribing, writing a review, and sharing the podcast on social media.
Transcript
[music]
Dave: In today's episode, we're discussing how we handle chores and allowance, and we'll be highlighting some numbers from a 2021 survey on allowance. Can you guess what the most lucrative chore is?
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Papa est Fatigué podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. As my kids get older, we've been struggling with how to handle allowance and chores. I've spoken to a number of other parents to get a sense of what they're doing, and Jim is included in that group. I know that there's some families that don't pay for chores because that's what you're expected to do as a family member, that's your contribution. I know other families that pay for chores because they feel that that replicates the real-world pay-for-work model. I've talked to another family that they divide their child's allowance into three parts, savings, spending, and charity.
Today, we thought we'd discuss how we've implemented chores and allowance and how we think about money as it relates to our kids. Maybe just to give a little bit of background, here's my deal. I'm obviously a dad. I've got two kids. I have a seven-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son.
Jim: I'm Jim, and I've got a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old daughter.
Dave: Just to give some background, we looked for some surveys and we found one from RoosterMoney and it's their 2021 allowance report. They talked to parents with kids aged between 4 and 14 across the US and this is what they found. 66% of parents give their children a regular allowance. That allowance ranges from $4.56 for the 4-year-olds up to $11.50 for the older kids, the 14-year-olds. Overall, kids earned an average of $8.75 a week and they saved 45% of that.
Now, one caveat with this report is that RoosterMoney is an app that allows parents to manage their children's money, allowance, and chores, and those kinds of things. It's a little unclear whether RoosterMoney simply asked their own customers, in which case the type of people, the type of kids are learning about money. They're probably more likely to save because we did find another survey that dealt with older kids, but in that survey up to I think 20 years old, those kids were only saving about 3%.
There's going to be some variation in terms of how much kids are saving here. Within this RoosterMoney report, what they found, again, on the lower end of the spectrum was the most common chores that kids are doing are things like cleaning their room, making the bed, looking after pets, doing laundry, and cleaning the bathroom. The most lucrative chores were mowing the lawn, which parents were paying out $7.83 on average, washing the car for $6.42, raking the leaves, $4.26, gardening $3.90, and help making dinner at $3.70.
Then one thing that I thought was interesting because I didn't grow up this way, but some parents are paying for school-related activities. Those kids were getting $12.57 on average for good grades and then $5.38 for doing homework. With that as a backdrop, Jim, why don't you talk to us a little bit about your philosophy on money, and giving your kids money, and how do you guys think about it?
Jim: Before we do, I wanted to ask about this. This isn't a budgeting podcast obviously, but what is the benchmark for savings? Is it 15%? Just for a general rule of thumb budget?
Dave: You know what? I don't know. I think part of it is it's changed as things have just gotten more expensive. I think it's probably a moving number. I don't know what it is at this point. It's actually something that would be interesting to look up because I would think-
Jim: 3% for charity is pretty-- That's a good rule of thumb, right, 1%?
Dave: Yes, somewhere around there. If we go back to the 3% that I was mentioned, they were saving 3% of their money versus saving 45% of their money. I think all parents are slightly aligned differently. The family that I know that does the saving, spending, charity, I think they're doing 20% charity, but it's off of like a $6 base. We're not talking huge sums, but as a percentage, we're still talking in percentages. I think all families are a little bit different in terms of where they want to stick that percentage.
Jim: My wife and I have talked about this. We wanted to start early. Obviously, money is such a big deal for everything and I want them to understand very early what it means to have money, how you can spend something. It's a good way to start with math even, with the younger one sorting out coins, and papers, and recognizing the number on the dollar bills and things like that.
More importantly, other than just that mechanical education, numerical education, there's also the idea of how much does something cost? It's a difficult thing to explain to a kid. Why can't we do this? Why can't we do that? One because it's expensive. What does that mean? We got to go down to first principles and kind of get there. Other than the numerical stuff, and I think you had mentioned this earlier, the idea of delayed gratification, that's something that's been really key.
They've got a little bit that they get every week, they could spend it on a pack of gum, let's say, this week, and have it right now, or save for two weeks or three weeks for that thing that they want, the bigger toy. It's been really satisfying to see that work and really see them make a conscious decision to save and to buy something that they really want.
Dave: On our end, I think what we're trying to accomplish are very similar in terms of our goals. One is going to be that delayed gratification. That is a life skill that some adults still don't have. I think in as much as we can get to the kids early on and start helping them out, it can be a little bit of a challenge at that age, but still to help them understand that delayed gratification piece.
One thing we're doing right now is my daughter's starting to save for our next trip, which at this point feels like it's probably a year away with everything that's going on, but I still want to start getting her to think about, "Hey, the next time we go on a big trip, here's some money that you can set aside," because the last time we went on a big trip, there was some serious meltdowns about like, "Well you've already spent your money." She was five at that time. We really hadn't started yet on teaching her about money and there were some very big-time meltdowns in stores about like, "Well, I want to buy that," and "Why can't I do that?"
This is starting to lay some of that groundwork for the next trip to say, "Well, hey, remember you saved all this money up and this is delayed gratification. This is why you save that dollar every week or whatever because here we are 52 weeks later or whatever, and now you've got something to spend." That's a big one. The other thing that I wanted to also work on with them was the concept of compound interest and just interest in general like how that all works and knowing that let's save a little bit and it'll keep growing.
There is another parent that we talked to. I think their deal was like they gave the child something like maybe $5 every week. If they didn't spend it, they would get $10.
It was at an extreme level of understanding compound interest, but it made the point for the child. I thought that was an interesting way of bringing in the concept of interest.
Then the last thing is that wants versus needs, which I remember growing up, my dad, "Do you really need that, or is that a want?" 16 year old me, 18 year old me, money was just came in and right out the next minute. I guess I'm becoming my dad and really trying to work on that.
It is tough. It's a seven-year-old. Wants versus needs is still a little tricky. Everything is a need at this point, but at least starting to introduce the concept of wants versus needs. I think giving them some money is that conduit for forcing those conversations to happen. Those are the three big things that we are looking to do.
Now, Jim, do your kids have an allowance? If they do, is it tied to doing chores? How do you guys think about that?
Jim: We've separated the money from the chores because we feel it's important to just have-- There's some responsibilities and some obligations that you have as a family member. Learning how to pick up after themselves, that's obviously a life skill that we need to teach and it's easier on my wife and I as well. By separating those two things, I think we have two different lessons.
We've started giving a dollar their age. They get a dollar for however old they are once a week. We have a family meeting on Sunday night. We deliver some cash and we count out and make sure that they know how it is, have them get their wallet, and see how much money they have already and we count it out, but it's just a gift. Essentially, it's a gift. It's an allowance that they can use to do all the things that we're talking about.
The seven-year-old wants to make a big purchase. She wants to buy a Playhouse and it's several hundred dollars. I don't exactly know how much it was. She was collaborating with a friend and they were going to do things to raise money for the Playhouse. We encourage those sorts of things. I think I told her I'd match her dollar for dollar. If she could raise half of it, I'd pay the other half. Those are ad hoc chores or tasks or things. They're usually at her suggestion and she's got, "I can do this, and how much will you pay me for that?" We work out a deal. Generally speaking, the allowance is not tied to any domestic labor. They should be learning how to pick up themselves after all.
Dave: On our end, we don't have an allowance set up yet. It's not really a function of we've proactively decided not to give them allowances. I think a lot of families fall very easily into one of two camps. Like yours of you're a member of the family and you do the things you do because you're a member of the family. That's what's expected. You're going to, whatever, wash the dishes or whatever those things are. The other side of the spectrum is, "Well, I pay you to do the chores. Here are the things that you do. If you do these things, you get paid. If you don't do these, then you don't get the full amount of allowance."
I think a lot of families fall very naturally into one of those two camps. It's very easy for them to say, "This is the thing that we want to do for our family." My wife and I have been talking about this for years now, and we still haven't quite come up with something that feels organic. I think we also are on the side of, "Look, there are certain things you do because you're a member of the family. I'm not going to pay you to do the dishes." At the same time, we're like, "Well, do we just give them money?" We just haven't really come to grips with what that means yet for us. It's less that we've actively said we're not going to give her allowance and more that we still struggle with it.
One thing though that we do do is that our daughter, the way that she earns money is primarily through one-off jobs, like things like washing the car. I'll get into a little bit about how we're doing that now. Effectively, some of these are things that she does get paid for on a weekly basis simply because that is the cadence of the activity. As long as she accomplishes that, then she gets paid. It is an allowance in that respect, but it's not part of what you would do because you're part of the family. It's not like we're getting paid to wash the dishes and stuff like that.
One thing I thought was interesting, and we discussed this a little bit earlier, and I'd love to hear more about your thoughts is the pay for grades thing. We're not going to pay for grades. I didn't grow up paying for grades. My parents were very against that. Jim, in talking before and just prepping for the podcast, you had said that you did grow up getting paid for grades. I assume you also got an allowance and you got paid for grades. I'm curious, 14-year-old you, was that motivating for you? If so, I guess I'm wondering if you plan to continue that with your kids.
Jim: Yes, I have to give it some thought because there's a lot of benefits to it. I think I got some benefits to it. It's also weird in that particularly as a younger kid, talk about delayed gratification. You've got to keep the eyes on the ball. I don't know how long a semester is when you're in fourth grade or whatever. It's a long time until you get your grades. It's harder to think that-- That reward was too far removed from a day-to-day activity. As I got older in high school, it's a little bit easier because you do really great on your exams. You do the final exam and you can have a reward that way.
I think my parents wanted to instill the idea that that was our job. When we're kids and when we're in school and even college, that is our job. Our job is supposed to be learning. That's why we're there. I think tying the reward to that activity is helpful and it helped me understand that there was value in what I was doing above and beyond just passing the test. I don't know, I'll have to talk it up with my wife and figure out if we're going to do it for our kids. I think I had offered to do it for my nephew, actually. I think, for some reason, that petered out. I guess probably I want to continue the tradition, so to speak.
Dave: It's interesting because I remember having a conversation with my parents when I was younger, and I don't even know how it came up about getting paid for grades and their take on it was effectively you should be motivated by wanting to do a good job and that's your job. They're just philosophical differences. It's always interesting to hear how people come to their philosophy. I was really interested. I knew a guy who, actually, I think was his uncle or grandfather who was like, "Look, if you get a certain amount of grades, a certain GPA, I'll just pay for your way through college. It's on me if you hit those goals." I mean, great.
Jim: It's good for mom and dad, right?
Dave: I mean, it was a scholarship. Well, I don't know where his parents were financially. It could have been one of these deals like, "Look, if you get a certain GPA, I will guarantee that whatever school you get into will be paid for by me." I remember that. At the time, it was not motivating for him at all. He was a super-smart guy. He was just one of these guys that could just get away with stuff because he was just gifted, just smart. He never really had to study. He didn't take the bait at the end. I thought it was an interesting motivation and an interesting way of tying money with your activities at school. I think Jim said you were doing, from an allowance perspective, it's a dollar a week for each--
Jim: Per year.
Dave: Per year. I'm curious. How did you come up with that? I've seen that come up in a couple other places. That's always something that we struggle with too. It's not just, "Do you do an allowance?" How much did you give them? I'm curious as to how you guys came up with that and how you decided that that was made sense for you?
Jim: It's going to have to be arbitrary. You got to come up with a number somehow. I think it was my wife that came up with that plan. She probably read it on a mother's blog or somewhere else. It works, and what's really interesting is when the birthday happens, and guess what? You got a raise. It's not $6. You're now earning $7. It just feels about right for the five-year-old. $5 a week to learn what to do with it and do what you like with it. It just felt right. Any more and I think it just gets to be ludicrous. We're talking about buying small toys and pieces of candy and things like that. They're not saving for an iPad.
Dave: Yes, not yet. I think one thing that I like about that is also what I struggle with sometimes is how do you explain to the younger one that the older one is getting more money? It just makes the conversation easier.
Jim: She's older.
Dave: Right, and when you're seven, you'll get $7 too. There's a little bit less of the, "Well, that's not fair. Why does she get this?" Or the older one going well, "Why does he get the same amount?" It just builds in this natural excellent logical explanation for the kids like, "Okay, that makes perfect sense." I like that and I think I'll be talking to my wife about that trick.
On our end, I said we don't have an allowance, but the way that we come up with the price points for the jobs that we look at is we have an understanding of roughly the kinds of things that she wants to buy and the rough price points. They're usually $10 to $20. Again, with that concept of the delayed gratification, we've built the pricing such that she can't buy anything by just doing one single job. The jobs generally are things where you can't do the job twice in a day. If it's washing the car, you can't wash the same car twice in a day. You could, I suppose but we're not paying you the second time around.
It still allows for that buffer of saying, "Okay, well, if you want to buy that thing, you wash the car this week, and when you wash it next week, you can buy it." Or, in some cases, it's like, "Well, if you really want to do it, you got to go talk to grandma and get them to drive their car over here. That's on you to work out the logistics." Kind of making her work for it a little bit. Generally, it's really designed to spread things out to just build in, again, that delayed gratification.
Jim: Just curious. What is the price point? What's the general dollar amount that you think your daughter would spend?
Dave: It generally is $10 to $20. Right now she's into Pokémon cards. She hasn't bought any. She's able to get free cards from her friends, so that's great. Twisty Petz is a big thing. Just the little random things that they play with one or two times and you're like, "You just dropped $20 for something that you interacted with once." We'll get into a little bit about that. Actually, that's the next question I have. It's generally about $10 to $20. Seems to be roughly the price point that she's at. There are maybe a few things that are around the $7 but it's usually $12 to $15 I think. If I had to guess that's really it.
Jim: The five and seven works really well for that because our daughter is about the same point. It's about $10. $10, $12. $20 is probably getting a really sweet toy, and they can't do that in a week that promotes the delayed gratification.
Dave: Right. I think that's how we just force that delayed gratification. If you want it, there's no way to earn this short of spending a few weeks to accomplish the task. This actually leads me to another question I had is when your kids get money, do you have any restrictions or limitations on how they spend their money? I'm also curious how the spending habits of your five-year-old differ from your seven-year-old and if you maybe direct them a little bit and if that is by age? If you like, "Well, you might not want this," versus a seven-year-old, "You can do whatever you want." With the five-year-old, it's like, "Well, are you sure you want?" How do you approach that?
Jim: It's pretty laissez-faire. I mean they're kids, toys, and candies. Usually, to your point, there're toys that they're going to buy for $5 or $7 or $10, those don't have a lot of longevity. Those are toy play, and then they end up under the bed and we throw them out three weeks later or three months later, however it is. They can spend on whatever they like so long as it's within reason. They are not buying smokes or anything like that.
The younger one usually will just follow the older one's lead. The older one wants this toy and then so the younger one wants it too. Then the difference is $2 and we're talking about a couple of weeks, so you can probably get the same thing. There have been a handful of items that the older one really wanted, really, really wanted. They were probably three or four week or even five-week toys. I totally encourage that. It was less than we're in the store and we see something, I'm going to pick it up. She really earned it. She really wanted those things but those have been few and far between. I can think of maybe three off the top of my head.
The younger one doesn't really fall in those sort of path but the older one, sometimes she gets her mind set on something and go, that's what it's for.
Dave: I love the term five-week toy. That's such a great way to define it. That's a three-week toy. That's a six-week toy." I like that because it really gives them a sense of the temporality of it. Five weeks, and it's mine.
On our end, I think we're pretty open to how they want to spend. Again, I think what we're trying to do is that wants versus needs. If you put too many guardrails, then they're not really making any decisions and so you can't learn from that.
That's a struggle that my wife and I go through where we both know that she's not going to play with this after she opens it, but she has to be free to make that decision on her own because otherwise, she's not learning anything. We do have there's just maybe two or three rules. One rule is, we don't do food. She can't buy food because we know she's going to buy junk food so we're not-- At this point, we're still controlling that a little bit. No food. The other thing we've learned the hard way is no slime in the house. We still are cleaning walls stained with slime and some bedding that the slime just never came off.
Jim: What about glitter slime?
Dave: [crosstalk] glitter, yes. That is what people have done to punish parents. That's a single person that designed that, and was like, "This is going to wreak havoc on parents." Glitter slime, they can't buy that stuff, and then food and snacks. Outside of that, she's free to buy whatever you want. It's not really a rule but the other guide rail that we do have around spending is that when she does earn money from any of these job activities, that the money is automatically split into four buckets. We have a savings, spending, investment, and charity.
At this point, she doesn't have the ability to say, "Of this whatever, $10, I want to spend this much on charity." We make that decision. It's just broken down into percentages and then at some point, she'll be able to spend it. We just got started on this. I think maybe I don't know, once a quarter or maybe at the end of the year, then we would say, "Okay, well let's pick a charity that you want to contribute to. Let's go ahead and donate that money."
I think that's important to make that a big event to make sure that she understands the purpose of charity, and she feels like she has a decision that charity process. Those are the only guide rails that we do have a route around how she spends.
I guess the next thing that I'd love to talk to you about is what chores do your kids do? How did you decide what those chores were and are they the same for each child?
Jim: We're a little bit more lenient on the younger one. For example, cleaning the room. They share a room and the older one is frequently upset that the younger one isn't. The older one says she's doing all the work and the younger one isn't helping at all but we give a little pass on that on cleaning it up for the younger one. The younger one's responsibilities are obviously less, but they both set the table. That's something that they have to do. Particularly on Sundays, we have a very, not formal but very structured family dinner. On Sunday nights, we have our family meeting, and they've got to set the table and then we all end up clearing it.
We bought them some fish with the idea that they're learning responsibilities. That's obviously not something we're going to pay them for. The fish got to stay alive. Then taking care of their laundry. The little kids' clothes, there's just so much of it and so tiny. They put it in a dirty laundry and then carry it over to the laundry machine. Then that feels like they're contributing to that process.
Dave: I'm curious, in your daughter's bedrooms is the mess evenly distributed or is it like so-- When you're older is like, "Well, I'm doing all the work," but is she the one that's doing most of the mess or is it the younger or is it split?
Jim: No. They are like, what was it, the odd couple? Remember it? I don't know. One's super neat, the other one's not. The older one is pretty meticulous. She likes to have things in a certain way and bookshelves organized and things like that. When she really gets going her side of the room looks like a little toddler magazine spread. The younger one is much more throw things everywhere. It's a little bit of tension between the two of them. Like I say, I'll help the younger one. Also, in doing so helping the older one.
Dave: The reason I ask is because we have similar things. The kids are responsible for cleaning the playroom and the bedroom. Our house, there is no dining room. The dining room is effectively the playroom and we eat all of our meals in this little breakfast room. It's a tiny little breakfast room, but it works. It works for us. The playroom is a complete train wreck. If you imagine a four-year-old, it's literally one of these. When he's looking for something, he's literally throwing stuff in the air and it lands wherever it lands. Then he moves on to the next thing. For a while on Sundays, it was like, "All right, we're cleaning the house," and it was both of them.
The older one has moved away from toys. She really is more into art projects and things like that. She's relatively contained but the playroom is 90% toys. There's Lego everywhere. That's a bane. Initially, both kids were responsible to clean that room up. It's really been very clear that it's the boy that's just wrecking that place. 90% of it is his mess. The girl is a little bit less responsible for the playroom. She does have to help out even though it wasn't her mess but the boy is most responsible for that. Then they-- They also share a bedroom and they do that together also.
Our daughter has a little bit less responsibility in cleaning simply because she's not responsible for as much of the mess. Truthfully, if you think about realistically how much cleaning is going on, I would say it's maybe 70% me, and then 20%, the boy and 10% the girl. I do make sure that he's engaged. It takes him a while to get a thing accomplished. They just dilly dally, but that's important. They both do that. They both are responsible for clearing the table after every meal.
Then a new thing that we've been doing just last couple of weeks is they're responsible for emptying the dishwasher. Part of that just because I'm done with that. Now that I've started to make that a thing, I try and time it so that the dishes are done, when they're home at the end of the day when they've got some time versus like doing it at the beginning of the day where they've got all this other stuff to do. I try and make it so that it is optimal for them to actually get it done.
They split it up pretty well. Our son is really just starting to get used to it but he knows where everything goes but it's a new process. He seems to enjoy that so that's good. Then our daughter is responsible for taking out the garbage. What that means is primarily just going through the house and bringing all the garbage cans together, consolidating them, and then I'll take them down. Actually, our son likes to wheel the garbage cans outside with me. He helps there. He actually is capable of taking a garbage can out. We've got three here. He'll take out one and I'll take the other two out. He is effectively responsible for one of the garbage cans.
Jim: Good on him.
Dave: He enjoys it. I enjoy it too. You guys have an allowance and you mentioned this, that your older one has the one-off jobs. I'm curious, what are the kinds of things that she comes up with? Then how do you guys determine how much you're going to pay for that? How often does she come up with these things?
Jim: I got to think. We were talking about the lemonade stand but that's different. I think she did propose washing the car. Frankly, it's not something I do very frequently anyway but she had the idea. I'll let her do it. I think we negotiated a price of $10 or something like that and that was great. She's going to take for an hour or so. It's a very finite fixed activity. Do the thing, put the stuff away, get the money. It feels like the right sort of chore or job I guess. Right kind of job.
Dave: We do the same. Actually, we also do $10 outside. They get $5 inside. The reason I pay for this too is because my car literally goes years without getting washed. I'm like, "Look if you want to do it, great." I think I'm okay with paying her for things that I would not normally do or if I would do it, I would get it outsourced by somebody else. If she wants to wash the car and so she'll be like," Hey, can we wash the car this weekend?" Great. When we started I'm like, "Okay, you want to wash the car. Great. In order to do that, there's some materials that you have to buy and that's going to come out of your first few car washes. While I pay you $10, I'm only going to give you $5 for the first two weeks because you got to cover some of your material costs here."
They wash the car and sometimes she can just do the interior, which is faster and also requires less of my time because if we're going to wash the car, there's going to be a parent outside on the street to keep tabs, and then my daughter's tiny, so she can only get so high up on the windows and she's certainly not doing the roof. "Okay, Daddy." I got to get in there and help. I'm not going to have her walk out on the street and do the street side of the car. That's a little bit more labor-intensive for me versus, "Hey, if you just want to earn a quick $5, you can vacuum the inside." They detail.
We got the little, what is it, like the car slime, I guess, that you stick on to clean out the crevices, and then we've got the Armor All. There's a legitimate mini-detailing process when she cleans the interior. It takes an hour for her to get through that. I'm like, "It looks great." We've got two kids, so the car is always a mess. I'm fine if you want to do that every week. That seems to work out.
The car wash is an easy one, but it's not a regular thing. The one that is regular that I alluded to at the beginning of the podcast is my daughter's teaching my mother-in-law English. When she comes to the States, she usually takes classes while she's here. I don't remember if it was my wife, I think it was my wife that was like, "Hey, why don't you practice speaking with our daughter?" She does get paid for that. There's a regular schedule. It's every Monday and Thursday, I think it's at four o'clock, they both get on.
I was listening to a little bit of it today and I would say 90% of it is in English, and then when there are some challenges, my daughter will switch into my mother-in-law's native tongue to just work out a few things, and then they'll switch back into English. That actually feels to me like there's some value for both parties. That feels to me like it's an okay thing to pay for. It's not like, "Well, you're part of the family, this is a job that you do as a family member," kind of thing. It feels distinct enough that I can pay for it without feeling like, "Well, that's just an extension of your duties as a family member."
Then the other thing that we're working on right now is an Etsy store. My daughter had taken a number of jewelry classes and she's started to design jewelry. We're not talking the Amazon plastic beads and stuff like that. It's legit jewelry beading and stuff like that. She's taken a number of classes. She's got a bunch of bracelets and necklaces that as I said, it's mostly just, I have to get my side of the house done, which is write up the little description and take all the photos.
I'm hoping that that will get her excited in the process of making something. Also, I'm hoping that maybe there's a little bit of entrepreneurship that comes out, that she starts to do. It's funny, we have a friend and her niece started a business where I think she was selling slime to her classmates. She was making a ton of money. She'd just go home and mix it up, and then she was taking orders at school [chuckles] and mixing it up at home and bringing it back to school. I'm like, "That's great."
This girl, I think, she was in middle school or something like that or lower school. I'm like, "That would be awesome if my daughter could get that." Maybe this Etsy store will start something with her, who knows, but that's another thing that we do.
The last thing that I wanted to ask you about was if you use any apps or anything else to help facilitate the chores. It sounded like you are actually giving out physical dollar bills. Are you going to the bank every month and just taking out a bunch of singles? How are you doing that logistically?
Jim: [crosstalk] -slowed down. We were doing cash, but with COVID, nobody wants to use cash. They're not going anywhere anyway. The system that we had, and I think that you use an app, but our system was, they used to have a wallet and they've got their coins and their money that maybe they got from the tooth fairy and then they've got their bills that they get every week.
We'll count it out, $5, $6, $7, with the singles and the fives. Then we'll count it all up and figure out how much money that they have, how much had they accumulated now. Then they put the money back in the wallet and then they put the wallet in a special place. Then we can't find it next week, so we have to go find it again and then do it all over again. It's a very analog system, but this is it.
Dave: It's interesting because when we were first starting to think about how this worked, I was like, "Physical money, that's what we want to do." As I was doing some research, I remember reading something where there was a parent that was like, "Look, our kids are not going to grow up with physical tender. I don't carry any cash on me anymore." This person's point was, "Look, the kids are going to grow up with a virtual currency anyway." I'm not talking like Bitcoin or anything like that, but they won't have tangible dollar bills in their hand. This parent's point was, "Well, then, this will just be normal for them."
I did go back and forth on that. Ultimately, I think part of it was just the sheer logistics, too. When she first started washing cars I'm like, "God, I don't have any money and now I owe her this. Did I pay her that?" You just lose track of stuff. I did move to an app. I found an app called the Greenlight app. I chose it for a couple of different reasons because there are a number of different apps there that help manage money.
The reasons I picked up were, again, if you go back to what we were trying to teach, and one was, it allows parents to set interest within the app. On her savings account, we can set an interest rate, it's not coming from the app, it's coming from the bank of mommy and daddy. It still allows us to teach her about compound interest and we control that. That was something that I was looking for, not a lot of apps did that.
Then the other thing that I've talked about was this savings, investing, spending, and charity. The apps all have savings and spending generally. I think most of them have charity. Also having this investing category that we wanted to have, and having it all under one roof versus we could go out and get an Acorn account for her or something like that. It just felt easier to have it all together. Again, because when she does earn money, we do siphon off some of that money.
When it hits her account, it just automatically disperses into those four groupings. It was just easier to have it there versus saying, "Okay, well, of the $10 now I got to assign one of these dollars to the Acorn." It was just easier to have it all in one place. That's why we chose that. That seems to go pretty well. What I do when she does earn money, it's like, "Okay, why don't you come over here, watch me transfer the money?" Because I think like you do. It is important for them to see some change of state, and because I can't give her the physical money to at least show her.
Actually, just today I was paying her because I missed the last Monday's payment on the English class. I was like, "Okay, you make $5 per class, but one of those dollars goes into investing." Because it's a small value, so the savings, investing, spending and charity is a little bit different for this one. "One of those dollars goes into investing, so now you have how many dollars, if you do two $4-classes, are going to go into your savings account?"
We have that process of helping her figure out, "Okay, I see that there is some new money into my account." She does ask, she's like "How much money is in my account?" She does check on it, which I think, is ultimately what we want to do, too, is have her understand, "Okay, last week you had this, and this week you have that. Look at the compound interest and how that works." For me, it was just an easier way to show her how everything was all fitting together nicely versus, "Okay, every month we have to recount the money. How much did you actually earn?" Or a spreadsheet. It just was a little bit easier for me to manage, that's why we went that way.
That was just a little insight into how we think about chores and allowance. If you have any questions for us, hit us up on the Facebook page, facebook.com/papaestfatigue. That's P-A-P-A-E-S-T-F-A-T-I-G-U-E. We'll be sure to put all the links in the show notes.
Thanks for listening to the Papa est Fatigué podcast. If you'd like to support the podcast, please give us a review, and don't forget to subscribe to get ideas in your discussions around fatherhood. I'll talk to you next time.
[00:38:44] [END OF AUDIO]