Extra jobs, a 24-hour wait and a dad bank
Your preteen is earning and spending real money now, often in one-click moments. In forty-five minutes you'll set the rules for what's free and what's paid, a pause before purchases, and a family bank that pays them to save.
- Time
- 45 min
- Cost
- $0
- Ages
- 10 to 13
- Where
- Kitchen table
What you need
- Paper or a notebook for the ledger
- A pen, and a phone calculator
- A phone or store flyer to check real prices
Before you start
- Pick a rate you can keep up. Your match or interest is your family's choice. Don't promise one you won't pay in six months.
- Watch easy-spending moments. Online games and apps make buying one tap. Agree that real money, theirs or yours, needs your OK first.
- Keep personal details private. Never let them type card numbers, passwords or addresses into a site you haven't checked together.
Steps
- Sort free from paid. List free family jobs and paid extra jobs, and agree what a job must be to count as an extra.
- Set pay for each extra. Put a pay amount beside each extra job and start a ledger to record what's earned.
- Start the 24-hour wait. For any buy over an agreed amount, write the item and date, wait a day, then check two prices.
- Open the dad bank. Start a savings page, write your match rate on it, add a goal with its real price, and set a monthly check.
- Practice once now. Pay one extra job now, split it between spend and the dad bank, and work out months to the goal.
If it stalls
- If they argue a family job should pay, say: "We all live here. Extras are different." Don't reopen the list in the middle of a fight.
- If they skip the wait, don't scold. Ask afterward whether they'd still buy it, and leave it at that.
Saved this month · goal progress
Signed off: can do this.Signed by Date