money, money, money

The Girls have discovered a new interest in money.  I should probably say a renewed interest as this is something that recently seems to come and go.  They're often all talk about money but not so good at putting it into action.  There's been talk of selling all sorts of crafts, lemonade and cookies on the street, but let's face it, we don't live in a very high traffic area and you can only encourage pestering the neighbours so much.  I've offered Darcy $1 for each of her stuffies but she looks at me like I have three purple and green heads so I guess she didn't like that idea to raise money.

We've discussed an allowance and as much as I don't believe children should be paid to do chores, I do think they need to be helpful around the house if they want an allowance.  I know, I know I'm not making sense, but I don't want to just hand them over money, nor do I want to encourage an attitude where they won't help if they don't get paid for it.  Last thing I want is to ask them to do something and have them turn around and ask me how much I'm going to pay them for it!

There are certain chores or life responsibilities that are non negotiable.  Unfortunately some of these are often not enforced (our bad) and end up becoming arguments for that very reason, however, others are very much a non issue anymore.

My most recent solution was to post a list on the fridge of different chores and their corresponding values.  This has resulted in them being much more helpful around the house which has been really nice... at least until I have to pay up.  It's up to the girls to keep a running list of what they've done and present me with the 'invoice' on Thursdays, I'll pay up on Friday.  I don't ask them to do any of the items on the list, there's no nagging or harrassing, it's just there if they want to earn a little extra money.

The first week this was in effect both girls managed to invoice me around $10...  It was a bit of a shock, since I wasn't sure how successful this would be.  At ten dollars a week for each of them I was wondering if I'd be able to keep up my financial end of the arrangement for very long.  The following week was closer to $5 each and I have to admit I was almost a little relieved that the novelty had warn off... The third week it dropped by almost 50% again and this week we were down to 50 cents each!!

Any ideas or suggestions on motivating children to help out around the house are more than welcome.