Pay for Chores? Yes and No. Help Kids Earn Money Like This.

Once kids understand the concept of money and the family has talked about wants vs. needs, kids will be eager to earn money. When that happens, we have the perfect approach to help kids earn money while helping the family team.

Hopefully, your kids are already responsible for a handful of tasks at home to help keep your lives running smoothly. Even a toddler or young child in preschool can help the family with age-appropriate tasks.

If you need inspiration for what your kids could be helping with at home, here are some great ideas.

If your kids aren’t doing things to help around the house yet, I highly recommend you get them started. It may not seem like much, but small tasks that progress as your child ages will help them learn the life skills they’ll need to become capable, resilient, and confident adults.

Even if their chore creates more work for you now, having your child help with small tasks will pay off in the long run and end up saving you time.

Some families pay an allowance for completing these tasks, while others pay an allowance simply to teach money management and responsibilities at home are done because they believe that work is just part of being a family.

Our team at Raising Families firmly falls into that second category. Taking care of your belongings, including your home is a basic part of life. Building in a reward system to do regular necessary tasks does not help kids build any of that vital intrinsic motivation we’re always striving for. 

There are some exceptions, however. Your kids are kids after all. They’re not adults yet and it’s always a good idea to have regular discussions about what constitutes a basic task around the home and what warrants a little extra reward. 

That’s where this month’s bonding challenge idea comes in.

What should a normal responsibility around the house be compared to one that goes above and beyond and earns money? This can depend on your family and what needs to get done on a daily or weekly basis as opposed to an occasional, monthly, or seasonal thing.

Things that need to be taken care of daily or weekly are a great place to start for normal chores. These can include setting the table for dinner, helping prepare dinner, wiping the table down after eating, making a lunch for school, vacuuming, dusting, doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and taking out the trash, to name a few.

Here are more ideas for what your child can do at each age.

Things above and beyond where kids can earn money should be things that aren’t on the normal task list. If your kids are responsible for vacuuming and dusting but don’t mop, then mopping would be a great way for your child to earn money.

These extra tasks can be things your child can do on their own or with you.

They can also depend on the time of year. With spring in full bloom now, maybe you need help getting the garden started or transplanting seedlings into larger pots. Maybe the yard needs to be raked or the garage needs to be organized.

Depending on the age of your child, organizing the garage may be something you do with them. If you work on a task with your child, you’ll get the job done in a shorter amount of time, have a chance to show them how you do it, and get some bonding time.

How to get started:

1. At your next family meeting, work together to come up with a list of tasks worth money.
2. Assign values to those tasks. In other words, discuss how much each task is worth. Parents and kids will likely have different ideas about the worth of a certain activities. Continue to negotiate until a reasonable compromise can be made.
3. Once the family agrees on the list, post it somewhere the family can see it.

Regardless of the time of year, you can have a running list of extra jobs your child can do and the dollar amount each one is worth. That way, when your child gets motivated to earn some extra money, they’ll have a list of things they can work on that will help them earn money while also helping the family team.