Simple Penny Motivation

November 4, 2011 in Simple Home School

I wanted to share with you something we have been doing this school year that balances motivation and discipline and ideally hits both in a positive way.

Money!!

Even my 4 year old is excited by money… must be in his genes Before I tell you what we do I wanted to let you know what we believe about kids and money.

Kids need to have money so they can learn to use it as young as possible (when they can count and not choke on it)
It is important for them to learn how to spend as well as how to donate and save
Kids need to have a way to earn their money (Dave Ramsey idea) and not learn that money is just handed out. Think job, not welfare.
They need to have money to buy the things they want and not walk through the store asking for things. Now it isn’t up to me if they get something - if they have the money, they can decide to spend or not.

(here is a picture of our money jar. We use dimes and pennies mostly)

Based on those ideas we have decided to tie money/allowance into their school work and life at home. … I understand that school doesn’t pay, but it as close as I can come to figure out how to tie their daily activities into income just like a job.

Here is what we do:

Every school day they get 20 cents at the beginning of the day
If they do an extra assignment they get paid an additional 10-20 cents
If I have to ask them to do something twice (like stop yelling, talking during rest/reading time, jumping on the bed, running through the house naked…. ) they lose a penny.
At the end of the week they can count their money and take out full dollars. (extra money is left in the cup for next week). Of the full dollars 20 cents is donated or ‘given to Jesus’ in a way that they choose and 20 cents is put in savings.

This has worked really great so far. Both my kids will jump into additional assignments easier (not frequently, but easier). My daughter has hit chapters in math that have been easy for her and done 5 or 6 assignments in an afternoon to rake in some big bucks. My son has really jumped on the ‘not loosing’ pennies. He runs around saying things like “I lost no pennies today mommy”, or ”Guess what daddy, ONLY lost 1 penny today”.

I was reading earlier this summer about how our human nature and motivation works better with the fear of loosing than the reward of getting. For example, weight loss pools where everyone puts in money and the winner walks away from all of it, are more successful because people are working to ‘not loose’ the money they have put up. It is a silly bit of being people I guess.

At first, I was afraid it would be a bit like negative reinforcement by taking money away when they weren’t obeying. The problem is that as parents we are much quicker to notice and correct the negative behavior than we are to notice the good. Sad but true, I do praise my kids for doing a good job, but it is harder for me to remember. This system seems to work well rewarding them with their money every day in an expectation of great things for the day.

Another option I have read about that is similar is paying kids a specific amount and then letting them ‘spend’ their money on TV or computer time.

Do you have other ways of motivating or ‘creative correction’? This is a HUGE parenting struggle and key to healthy kids and healthy relationships. It has the added problem of every kid being different

Come back next Friday for a photo essay of our FFFT (Final Fall Field Trip)!

Linked up to the Blogging Bee. Interested in finding more ways to get the word on on my blog. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Tags: assignment, class, daughter, Dave Ramsey, daveramsey, dimes, discipline, extra money, Financial, job, kids and money, money allowance, money kids, motivation, pennies, Savings, school, school year, welfare
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Making a Big Difference…. Simply.

September 20, 2011 in Simple Compassion

Welcome to my simple living blog! Thanks for reading. Take a look around and feel free to comment or e-mail me.

I want to share a simple way that my family has been involved in making a powerful difference. For the last 3ish years we have sponserd 2 children through World Vision.

First off I have a huge burden for those in 3rd world countries. There are evils and poverty in our country, but here there are programs everywhere for food and medical. Clean water and education are amazingly easy to come by no matter who you are or where you are. In other countries it isn’t this way. Lack of clean water, food and basic medical attention kill millions of people. The education that could help pull them out of the cycle is often something they can’t get, don’t have time to get, or are too weak to get. We did nothing to deserve where we were born and they did nothing to deserve where they were born. In the world, we are all family and we should do all we can to help each other.

What is neat about world vision is the connection. We picked 2 children, matching ages and genders with our own as close as we could and have been able to write back and forth and learn about how they are benefiting from our support. We know that these children will grow up to get the education that can give lasting help to their community.

Let me introduce you to our kids:

Juster(below)-Juster is a 7-year-old girl in Malawi. She seems shy, but likes to draw us pictures and is doing well in school. Her aunt writes us letters because she isn’t old enough to write yet. As she does more school I am looking forward to seeing letters from her. Last Christmas we sent extra money and she was able to get several things including a metal storage container to keep the bugs from destroying her blankets, cloths and a goat. We send $35 for Juster every month and a world vision worker checks on her everyday because she is high risk. She is a Hope Child.

Phochland(seen at the top of the post)-Phochland is a little 4-year-old boy with lots of older siblings living in northeast India. Still to old to do school or write he has done a few simple drawings or colorings for us and we send him lots of stickers. He loves playing ball and is very healthy. Last Christmas, with some extra money we sent, world vision purchased a bike for his dad. We send $30 a month for Phochland and the world vision worker checks on him every week.

Sponsor a Child

These are my additional kids. It has been a great experience for our whole family. Lily and Ian both write letters and pick out stickers and treats to send. We would love to visit them someday.

In this world we can’t fix all the problems, and it seems overwhelming when we hear all the terrible struggles people face. I love that I can do something for someone. These kids, their families and their communities benefit from a small amount that is automatically withdrawn out of my account each month.

Will you help too? Will you find a kid to help? It is super easy, pick and kid and set up automatic withdrawal and they take it from there. If you have time, when you remember, you can send a note, but your money is working even when you don’t think about it.

My reason for writing this article is two-fold. First, I think all kids deserve a chance no matter where they are born, and I believe World Vision does a great job of offering sustainable help to communities.

Second, if I can convince 5 of you to sign up by the end of Sep to sponsor a child I get entered in a drawing for a trip to Peru. So, if you sign up, send me an e-mail with your name and your sponsored childs ID number :) I would also love to hear how it is going as you sponsor your child.

This is such a great opportunity. As much as I would love to fly over to some of these countries and try to help, I can’t figure out a good way now. What my small contribution does every month provides the practical, educated, lasting help that I can’t physically give. It is a blessing to be involved, simple to , and a bargain!

Will you sponsor? Sponsor Now!

Tags: 3rd world countries, bargain, blessing, Blog, clean water, cloths, contribution, daughter, difference, education, extra money, family, Food, Health, help, high risk, Hope, hope child, Juster, kid, living, malawi, medical attention, Money, northeast India, Phochland, PhochlandÂ, poverty, problem, reading, Simple, sponserd, Sponsor, support, time, water food, Website, world, world vision
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Simplify-Refuse To Buy Junk

September 15, 2011 in Minimalist Tips

This has been a habit that I have learned to break while living in our small apartment space. Stop buying junk!

It isn’t easy. The reality is that society with all the brains and money it can muster are trying to get us to buy junk. Add to that, the perceived cure to our current economic crisis would be people consuming and buying more.

However, it is necessary. To live a simplified life and a sustainable minimalistic life one has to mastering this concept. Stop buying junk!

The conspiracy is all interconnected. Bigger houses with bigger closets and more cabinets, bigger shopping carts and more trunk space in cars. All the space begs to be filled. They are easy to get filled with junk because:

We can’t wait to buy a quality product so we have created a market for the cheapest, thinnest, flimsiest things we can find to give the look of quality. Look at most clothing…..
Planned obsolesence which means that companies make a science out of how long something has to hold together or work for us to still buy it, then makes sure it breaks down beyond repair so we have to replace it again. This concept makes me angry! There is a science for making sure things break down and are hard to repair. Sound like most appliances?

Society creates the need for the illusion of success while marketing, store layout, scents, music etc make sure we buy all we can. Then once we have all the stuff the need is always there to replace items because they wear out, break, look used and flimsy all after just a short time. Increase stuff, replace stuff, increase our stuff, replace what breaks …. then we have a life full of worn out junk filling our houses and lives.

Stop the junk! It isn’t about just getting rid of stuff as it gets used and worn out or we get tired of it, if it was only that we would have a part-time job sorting and getting rid of stuff. The ideal with minimalism and simple living is that we go through, sort, get rid of stuff once. (it may take several times but each time it should be a much smaller pile. From 100% quantity to 60% to 30% to 20% etc… the piles should be drastically smaller not growing) Less junk, don’t buy stuff that needs replaced, less junk, keep quality that doesn’t need maintained….. and we have our time and money back.

The junk caused by our ’consumer society on crack’ cheats us of:

Time-Purchasing, picking up, cleaning, maintaining, storing, sorting, storing, sorting, storing, trying to fix, giving away….. you get the idea.
Money-Yeah junk is usually the cheap stuff. It is the stuff that turns our grocery shopping trip for a few things into a cart load. Have you heard the example of compounding interest of a Starbucks coffee (or not having a Starbucks coffee in the example) turning into a fortune at the end of life? That is real money. This is the real money that junk is stealing from us every day.
Our Home and very existance-Um… the idea of making and shipping piles of junk that end up in landfills, sometimes within months, is bad for the earth…. really bad….. just saying.

I found this website last winter and I love this woman. I think she should be president. Vote for Annie Leonard! She has some great movies on stuff that are great for all ages. Great educational material for kids. Check it out at www.storyofstuff.com

But what if our economy is hanging on this junk thread. What would happen if we just stopped buying junk? If we stood up and decided we wouldn’t take the poor quality, the manipulation, and the environmental burden any more? Would it ruin the economy completely?

I think it would definitely be a bit crazy for business for a while, but it isn’t that we want less. We aren’t asking for less, we are asking for more in smaller packages. People still have time and money to earn and spend. What if we demanded a quality that required much more time and work. People would still have jobs making these things even though it would take lots more time and design. These quality items would be worth the extra money and would hold up to wear. Also, if we weren’t so quick to buy junk from all over the world, maybe we could really develop and treasure ‘Made In America’ goods and keep lots more of the money in our country. They would take less space, but be much more efficient allowing us to free up our time and space. I believe our economy could recover, or even get better. What would change is the environmental burden and the time wasted. With fewer things being made and lasting longer, waste and transportation pollutions could drastically drop. We wouldn’t need to spend all our free time buying, fixing, sorting, hunting for, storing… etc.

So pick your reason:

Time
Money
Environment
Principle
Appreciation of finer things

…. and STOP buying junk!

Note: I am not a Wal-Mart hater. I don’t really like the place, but I end up there now and then. Tonight I had to stop for a large envelope. … it is just that most of the place is filled with junk and it makes a great example.

Tags: apartment, apartment space, Business, extra money, getting rid of stuff, minimalism, minimalistic, Money, quality product, Simple, Simplified, small apartment, store layout, Website
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