Parenting Cents

Well, it’s Proposal Day.  Today is the day that I’m supposed to have proposals on my desk from our daughters, aged 5 and 9.  On the way to school this morning, G (9) was unsure of what she was going to propose, but she said she does want jobs.  Why?  “So I can earn some more money.”   It wasn’t an enthusiastic answer, but it was a positive answer.

M (5), on the other hand, has known what she wants her jobs to be since the time she was fired.  We may actually have to negotiate her down to some more manageable occupations, though, because her preliminary list contained things like “clean the entire house.”  Admittedly, she could probably clean the entire house just as well as I could…  but the quality of my work in that area wouldn’t be worth 25 cents per day either.  

Assuming we can get new jobs negotiated, each kid will have one week to use as a trial period.  They’ll have checklists next week and will be expected to complete them every day, but they won’t be paid for it.  If they do an acceptable job on their checklists for that week, then we’ll re-hire them for the following week.

I hope the girls are actually learning real-world lessons out of this.  I’m not certain that it’s all sinking in, but I think some of it is.  Regardless, they are both excellent kids who tend not to whine, complain, beg, fight, or blame.  They’re doing a great job of being great kids, and that’s what allows us to work on programs like this checklist system to help them achieve goals beyond the basics.

And if they fail to do well at their new jobs…  I’ll fire them again.    

Well, that’s it.  The kids are fired.

As of today, G has emptied the dishwasher once and cleaned out Speedy’s litter box twice.  Needless to say, Speedy is not happy and neither am I.  G has also been neglecting her guitar, the lessons for which we are paying.  Her new Nintendo DS seems to be taking up every spare moment, at the expense of her actual responsibilities.  That’s something I thought would happen, and I couldn’t resist giving her an “I told you so” talk about it.

M has checked off “Garbage” every day this week.  The problem is that she hasn’t done the job every day.  A technicality, I know, but I can’t let it go.  She has been telling her mother that she doesn’t care whether she gets to earn money or not.  So now we’re letting her not.

We have informed both girls that they will not be paid for what they did – which isn’t much – this week.  They are also unemployed for at least two weeks.  If they come back to us with acceptable proposals, we’ll begin negotiations again.  They each need to bring us a list of jobs they are willing to do and the amount they would charge for each.  G (age 9) has said that she would like to keep the same jobs and just put more effort into getting them done.  M (age 5) has already created a list of jobs, including “Clean the entire house”, “Dust everything”, “Brush Speedy’s hair”, and “Clean mirrors”.  We’ll have to help her refine the list a bit to make it manageable for someone her age.  We also need to discuss her rate of pay, as she initially proposed being paid $10 to brush the cat.  I think I’d rather give the cat a cardboard box and let him take care of the brushing himself.

Including this week, they’ll each have at least three weeks of lost revenue.  I’m not sure what impact that will actually have with them, but I’m interested to see whether there’s an increase in motivation the next time they find that “gotta have it” item and don’t have the money to buy it.

Our kids seem to have lost interest in their jobs checklists.  With school in session and other activities going on, the check marks have been getting recorded less and less frequently.  G has her Nintendo DS with a little bit of money left and no big spending goals on the horizon, so her motivation has taken a downturn.  Suddenly, laundry is too hard or too inconvenient to do, the dishwasher can stay filled, and the cat is apparently expected to fend for himself most days (poor little guy).

M has also slacked off even more than usual lately.  The week before last, she earned a dismal $1.25 by completing 5 of her 21 tasks.  Last week, I believe there were 6 check marks.  Neither of the girls has been paid for last week, however, because I was out of town over the weekend, and no one has asked for their money.  We’ll see how long it takes for them to realize they’re missing their money.

After seeing that both checklists for this week are still blank, I told the girls last night that they would be fired from their jobs and lose their source of income if their performance did not improve.  The threat had no impact, though.  As we left for school this morning, I discovered that poor little Speedy Cat has been left to fend for himself once again. 

Sundays are normally pay day at our house.  The girls each turn in their checklists for the prior week, we count up the completed jobs, and I pay them out of our Kid Commission envelope.  This past week being their first week back to school, I’ve had to repeatedly remind both of them to do their jobs when they are home.  It’s made a difference in one sense – their checklists are more complete than in the past few weeks.  There are still many more blank boxes though, which is disappointing to me and should be to them as well.

I decided today that I am not going to remind them about pay day.  We’ll see how much it actually means for them.  9-year-old G, who is saving for that Nintendo DS, went through the Best Buy ad in the paper this morning, hoping to see a reduced price.  Nope.  They didn’t even advertise them this week.  Thinking about her goal apparently didn’t motivate her to do her jobs for today.  Speedy Cat continues to walk around the house in a huff, irritated that it’s nearly 10 AM and his litter box and food dish haven’t been freshened since yesterday.

We’ll see how this goes today.  My prediction: Neither kid will get their jobs done for today – putting them behind for this week already – and pay day will end up being forgotten until tomorrow (at least).  I’ve apparently got to work on the motivation factor.

We just celebrated G’s 9th birthday over the weekend.  She got some cool gifts that she was really happy with and our family spent the day – the whole day – at the Worlds of Fun amusement park.  The weather was perfect and Mom and Dad were sufficiently worn out by the time we made it home.

Also this weekend, G and I wrapped up our long-running negotiations regarding her job checklist.  Here are the changes we’ve made and to which we’ve agreed.

• Fee-for-service – No more red Xs
• Replace “Garbage” with “Laundry”

No more red Xs:  We’re moving to a fee-for-service structure for G’s checklist.  She now gets paid strictly based on how many times she does each of her jobs during the week- 50 cents per check mark with a cap of $10 per week.  She has been very responsible in the past about telling us when she forgot to do a job or just plain didn’t do a job, so I trust that she will continue being honest about the check marks.

As she thought out her proposal (I requested a formal proposal from her), G decided that emptying the garbage cans in the house each day was too easy to be worth 50 cents.  I know, you think I’m making that up, don’t you?  Those were her words – the job was too easy.  She suggested that she take on partial responsibility for doing our household laundry, earning 50 cents for each day that she washed clothes.  I offered a counter proposal in which she could earn 50 cents per load, thus eliminating the inevitable “it’s not fair” argument when she does four loads in one day and only sees a measly half-dollar for her effort.

I also suggested that she try out the new job before she committed to it.  I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I am banned from the laundry room in our home.  I have to admit that my banishment does not altogether disappoint me – and I wanted to make sure that G didn’t have the same disdain for the job as I do.  So, the week before her birthday, she continued doing her regular three jobs while also taking on a few loads of laundry for free (Hey, if you do a job for free, that will tell you for sure whether you enjoy it!  Am I right, people?).  She liked the new job just fine, and so with the new week, she exchanged her “garbage” job for “laundry” and the new system was in place.

Now on pay day, G presents her checklist, we count up the number of check marks, we add in the number of loads of laundry she completed each day (Mom is the judge on what constitutes completion of a load), and she is paid an amount equal to 50 cents times the number of completed jobs.  I had to place the $10 cap on her commission, though, due to fear that she would go nuts with the laundry and would earn my entire paycheck as commission.  The last thing we need is for the balance of financial power to swing to the younger generation while they’re still in the single-digit age range.

The next lesson in store for the girls is on the concept of “unpaid leave.”  Both of them left mid-week to spend 6 days at their grandparents’ house while their checklists remain blank.  I’m already anticipating their reactions when I tell them I’m only paying them for what they actually did.  To do otherwise would be to take a step back toward an “allowance” rather than “commission.”  I’ve honestly been agonizing over this, but I don’t see any other way to handle it within our agreements.

Maybe the next negotiation will produce some additional provisos from the other side of the table. 

Our kids have been on a checklist commission system for about a year now.  Each weekend after we have “pay day” for the prior week, I print a new checklist for each of them.  About two-thirds of it is taken up by a picture of some sort – sometimes their choice, and sometimes mine.  The bottom third is a grid with a column for each day of the week and rows for each of their three jobs.

Their checklists get hung up by the door we usually use on our way in and out of the house.  Each day, as they complete each job, they check it off.  At the end of the day (or the next day), Dad glances over the lists, busts out the red marker, and makes a red “X” on each job that didn’t get done.  This isn’t done as punishment or as a humiliation tactic.  It’s just a means of record-keeping.  On pay day – typically Saturday – I go over the checklist with each of our girls, calculate their standard commission minus the value of each red “X”, and pay them out of my specially-labeled “Commission Envelope.”

This is actually an allowance-commission hybrid system.  We have been setting the standard commission rate based on each kid’s age – $8 for the older one and $5 for the younger one.  The red Xs have a fairly proportional value – 50 cents for the older kid and 25 cents for the younger one.  For example, if G has everything checked except for three items, she loses $1.50 for the week ($0.50 x 3), resulting in commission of $6.50 for the week.  I’ll write more about how the money is divided into envelopes in a future post.

Soon we are moving to a pure commission system, in which each kid will get paid only for the jobs she does.  G (the soon-to-be-nine-year-old) has already submitted a proposal to me.  She would like to continue with three jobs, but trade “garbage” for “laundry.”  If that goes well, my wife should be pleased about that (I’m not actually allowed to do laundry in our house).  G believes that cleaning out the dishwasher, doing the laundry, and taking care of the cat are each worth 50 cents per day.  That gives her a potential commission of $10.50 per week, which is better than the $9.00 that she would have gotten under the hybrid system.  In my counter-proposal, I suggested that laundry isn’t so much a daily chore as it is a load-by-load chore.  It seems more fair to pay her 50 cents for each load she does rather than 50 cents for each day that she does at least one load.

Anyhoo, with G’s birthday coming up, I believe we are close to an agreement.  This eliminates the dreaded red Xs and allows her to “bill” me for actual work.  We’re getting closer to a real-world scenario, and starting to pick up some lessons on how business is conducted.

Since we treat each kid’s situation individually rather than as a competition, I think we’ll leave M (the 5 year old) on the hybrid system for now.  She still needs frequent reminders to take care of her checklist, and the red Xs have not been kind to her at times.  She is about to make her first major purchase out of her savings envelope – a $50 ukulele that she picked out at the guitar studio.  By letting her save her own money and set her own goals (with some guidance), I can’t complain about paying 50 bucks for something that might not get much use.  It’s her money, she’s saved it, and she’s saved more than enough of it to get to her first goal.  The excitement of taking her savings envelope in and plunking down the cash for that ukulele will be a lesson her little brain will retain for quite a while.