It’s Not A Chore At All!

It’s Not A Chore At All!

There are many good reasons why parents should enlist the help of your little ones in the house.

Over and above getting some relief or for the children to learn and contribute a share for the family, chores help them to learn responsibility and lessons about life.

Parents can start to assign some simple chores to their children when they are three or four years old e.g. putting away the toys.

They may messed things up even more or take a long time to do a chore but this is essential for them to start learning to be a team player.

According to “More Than a Chore: Getting Things Done the Right Way” by Family Education, children will learn that a job well done is a reward on its own, and praises from parents or any other rewards e.g. going out to play are secondary benefits. 

In short, they will learn to possess an inner drive to do well rather than be dependent on external motivation.

In the same article, it is also explained that children will learn to delay gratification e.g. by doing their chores first before they can go out to play.

Learning to delay gratification is ranked by John Gray, PhD, in Children Are from Heaven, one of the "essential life skills".

Sounds great isn’t it? So now, here are some tips to help get your child started:

1. Be positive. This will help encourage your child to adopt the same attitude. 
2. Be fair. Hold a family meeting to discuss and assign chores to all family members. Where possible, do take into consideration individual preference.
3. Be participative & creative. Do some chores together with your child and make it fun by e.g. singing together while working. This can be a good bonding time too!
4. Be consistent. Set a schedule and help your child to work at the chores regularly.
5. Be realistic.  Everyone has his/ her own ways of doing things, even for the children. Avoid criticism or worse, jumping in to do the chore when it is not done the way preferred.
6. Be encouraging. Praising will help your child to feel appreciated and work at his/ her chores more willingly.

Reference Source: More Than a Chore: Getting Things Done the Right Way by Family Education 

UH-OH... Is Your Child Overspending?

UH-OH... Is Your Child Overspending?

It is not uncommon to hear how some parents can be surprised by the amount of money spent by their children, especially for the older ones, who would have learnt to enjoy more things in life.

Weekly allowance should be given to younger children because they are unlikely be able to focus on things on longer-term basis. However, monthly allowance is recommended for older children so as to help them learn and practice budgeting.

Upon handing out the money, some parents will get the children to start small by setting aside a fixed amount or a percentage of the allowance to be saved. 

There are also others who may leave the amount allocation to the child, as long as he/ she spends within the given sum, preferably with spares to save.

But wait! Is that good enough for your child to learn about money? How about teaching and helping your child to plan and set aside a simple budget?

While it is easy for parents to state how the money allowance is to be used and saved, it is more important for a child to be able to think and exercise control over his/ her money.

With a budget, it helps to set some guidelines for your child to allocate his/ her spending, savings and sharing e.g. for charity or gifts and so on.

Get started by first grabbing a paper and pen. Sit down with your child to determine the time frame for the budget. To make things easier, it could be based on weekly/ monthly allowance giving basis.

Run through with your child to list down the items that he/ she will have to spend on, as well as the prices. From the list of items, also known as expenses, find out which are the variable and fixed expenses.

This is the part where numbers matter

Fixed expenses are those that definitely need to be paid for, and of which the amount needs to be set aside strictly e.g. bus transport.

Variable expenses are those that are flexible and may vary in amount e.g. birthday gifts for friends. Despite that variable expenses will change, it is still necessary to set aside an estimated amount, and any unused amount could be passed on to the next round.

Do remember to get your child to include any wishlist items / those that they need to pay once a year e.g. Granny’s birthday.

If the budget time frame is weekly, he/ she will need to divide the cost by 52, and set this as a target amount to be saved weekly. Similarly, if the budget time frame is monthly, the amount will be by 12.

When the budget is done, do try it out and review it with your child for a few more rounds so that he/ she can get the hang of it to develop a good habit in budgeting for his/ her own money!