The Juggle WSJ.com on choices and tradeoffs people make as they juggle work and family.
A Payday for Your Kids?
By Rachel Emma Silverman
[EXCERPT]
Giving kids’ allowances raises lots of questions for parents: How much to pay? Should the money be tied to chores – and if so, which ones? Can the kids spend the money freely, or must they save part of it?
I recently learned about another novel way to give allowance. One mom of a 4-year-old daughter, Alisa T. Weinstein, decided to forgo the traditional idea of paying for household chores. Instead, she compiled a list of careers and simple “kiddified” tasks associated with them. (A market researcher, for example, could do a small verbal survey of classmates’ favorite ice cream flavors, or a banker could give different denominations of change.) Each week or so, her daughter would take on the role of a certain profession and perform the associated work. At the end, Weinstein rewarded her daughter with a “payday,” according to the New York Times’ Bucks blog, which profiled Weinstein.
Weinstein describes the program in more detail and provides a list of careers and tasks in a new book “Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work and Time Well Spent,” and on a website EarnMyKeep.com. Weinstein insists the program is not as labor-intensive as it sounds and parents need not devote more than 10 to 15 minutes a week on it.
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