Teaching your kids about the value of money and earning a living

Replying to: Teaching your kids to not only to Survive but to do well in Life

All wise words, mate. Sounds like your kids are well on the way to being the kind of people we all want to be around.
I am also trying to encourage my daughters to learn about the expectations of doing work, both paid and unpaid. Giving youngsters some kind of chores to carry out ( laying and clearing the table around meals, caring for and feeding the dog, keeping their room tidy etc) encourages them to see that looking after themselves, their environment and community is normal and rewarding. They also have the opportunity of volunteering for extra task ( chores are expected and unpaid ) to earn a bit of pocket money. I encourage them to save some of it and budget to some extent, as learning to delay immediate gratification in exchange for a longer-term goal is a very valuable skill which few adults have mastered.
-Orsotoro

Great topic, thanks for bringing it up.

In our home we have it written down in a chart kept on the fridge, who’s in charge of cooking and cleaning up each day. It does help a lot and it gives kids and teens a sense of order and reasonability. It also teaches them to value what parents do for them every day and not take it for granted so much.
As you said, its chores, it’s their obligation. They do a little bit to help around the house, it both helps parents and it helps them so as to know how to do things when they end up living by themselves.
Money from Christmas or birthdays, it all get put away and saved. The money stash soon reaches interesting figures when its not thrown away on silly junk.

For our oldest son, he’s been doing a bit of freelance programing. My wife and I told him several times how great it is to have this experience at his age (16) to actually earn your own money, to be able to do it online and while doing something you like.  Not only that but having the work experience, talking and communicating with a client, learning how much he should charge per hour and how long it takes him to get the job done.  All invaluable.

Some may not realize this, but these skills, knowing how to budget, how to save money, how to make it, these are all very important survival skills.

FerFAL

Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”