Budgeting with Kids

Numbers, calculators, budgets...

That's my hubby's idea of a fun time.  ;)

For the first 8 years of our marriage, I did our budget.  

It was a miserable job for me.  Or maybe I just did a miserable job??  

Either way, I did not enjoy it in the least.

For the past 2.5 years, Nate has taken over our budget and, WOW, am I thankful!  He's so much better at it, and he actually ENJOYS it.  Crazy man.

While Nate was teaching the older kids how to budget using our household budget, he decided that they should have their own budgets. 

Granted, they don't have much money (we don't give allowance, but they do get money from grandparents for various holidays.  They can also make money if they do jobs for us around the house.), but he wants them to learn how to wisely use (give, save, and spend) the little that they do have.  If they can start making good choices when they are young, hopefully that will save them from making stupid (oftentimes detrimental) choices when they get older.

They were very excited to have their own budget, and I thought it was a brilliant idea.  

Hopefully they'll learn well from their wise-with-money Daddy.

Emilia's Entrepreneurial Venture

After I explained this $10 business to my husband, he thought it would be fun for the kids (and a good lesson as well) to buy something from Goodwill and sell it (or something like it that they already had) again on Craigslist.  Hopefully they could make some money when they sold it again.

So a couple Saturdays ago, we loaded up the kids and went to a local Goodwill to find some treasures.  (That's where we got this $2 desk.) 

Nate and Emilia were on a hunt for a bike.  They were specifically looking for one that Emilia could ride now since her old bike was too small.  They found a bike that looked junky to me (hole in the seat and the tires looked like they wouldn't work), but they made the decision to buy it because Nate said he could fix it (which he did once we got home!).  She bought it for $5.  Now, it looks and rides great!

Here's a short video of her explaining the "venture".

After fixing her new bike, we had her take pictures of her old bike to sell on Craigslist.  She did the uploading of the pictures, the typing (Nate kept reminding me not to type for her...I couldn't help it - it was taking forever!), and the posting of the ad.

When emails came in, we made sure she read and responded to them.  She even had to lower the price from her original $25 down to $20 because there weren't a lot of responses.

Finally, someone was interested, and Emilia was very excited (and nervous)!

When the woman arrived, I did some of the talking, explaining that Emilia was the one selling the bike, so the lady had her sweet little girl pay Emilia.

After figuring out what her profit was ("If you buy something for $5 and you sell it for $20, how much did you make?"), I had her delete her ad from Craigslist and call Nate at work to share the good news!

$15 to a 7 year old is a lot of money.  She was pretty pleased with the whole thing.

And so were her daddy and I!