the network for radical unschooling families

money sharing?

Here's an issue I'm not sure how I want to approach yet. My kids are just getting to the age where they really 'get' what money can do (my oldest is almost ten). I want to avoid making money a top down power structure, but I don't really have a good model of how to share it. My biggest fear is that they will get that glazed look in their eyes when I start explaining where all the money goes. I'm also afraid that when we somehow come up with a way to share out some spending money, we will come to the end of the month and realize there was something I didn't anticipate and be in big trouble. How do you handle the money in your families?

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Melissa on July 25, 2008 at 2:40pm

We sat down with monopoly money adding up to how much we had coming in each week, and divided it into a pie chart with all of our bills. Very visual and easy way to see where it does go (I think a lot of grown ups should do this teehee). Then we have the left over 'cash' in our hand and everyone has a say in where it should go. We can make piles...one for bowling, one for video games, whatever. We can move it around and change our minds without buyers remorse.

Actually, I think we stated off with drawings that everyone made of each of our 'bills'...the water bill, the gas bill, the electricity bill, insurance, mortgage. Whatever else we have... and put the money on those drawings. But my girls are artsy like that and enjoyed drawing them and talking about what bills we do have.

Oh, and we have the game payday. Which we played, not because we wanted to teach them about payday, but because it was one of my husbands favorite games when he was little.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Julie B on July 25, 2008 at 8:03pm

At first, we could buy anything Dmitri (3) asked for, because he didn't ask for much. Sometime when he was two, his requests were outstripping available funds, so we extended what we do for our own "fun money" to him. We already have a family budget with a set amount of money left over for personal spending. We just took what we had (an already pretty modest amount) and split it in three instead of two.

The nice thing about it is that there is always more coming in X days. It always comes, and it comes regularly. Just recently, he wanted something that exceeded the amount of money on hand, so we saved for it. Last week he picked something out in a catalog that costs over $200, but he hasn't mentioned it again.