Fall in our home brings birthday season. We are blessed to have 6 birthdays in 6 weeks. It gets a bit crazy at times, but we do truly enjoy this season of celebration.
I am sure you can imagine how expensive this time could become when seven children are all trying to purchase birthday presents for their siblings. It can be quite the task. We have developed a system, however, that seems to work great for our family. It provides each child with the opportunity to choose a gift for each sibling and develop their money managing skills at the same time. A win-win for our whole family.
Here is what we do, if you like it, maybe you can start something similar in your home....
First, we establish a budget, it is usually $2 per child; meaning everyone gets $2 for each person's gift. (thus depending on the child they get between $10 and $12 to spend for others) In our last community there was a church that had a ginormous rummage sale each September. We would use this event as our shopping venue, it was great. Where we live currently, our town has a community wide rummage sale during the same time frame. We are able to use this event for our shopping now a days. It is much more difficult to find items this way, so at the end of the day we head to the local thrift store to help fill in any gaps that are left.
I really enjoy this way of celebrating! It is amazing how many things a child can find for $2 or less. Each child is responsible for finding their own gifts to give (ok, I helped the 18 month old). Every child knows their budget and is able to move within their budget to fill their list. For example, if they find the "perfect" present for one of their siblings but it is $3, they know that they need to spend only $1.50 on two of their other siblings. The majority of the time, they have money left over at the end of the day. They were able to find gifts for everyone for less than their budget. No one is allowed to exceed their budget.
If a child is about to go over budget, they can suggest an item they found be purchased by someone else. This gets them all looking for great ideas for each other. There are always lots of suggestions and "look at this" being tossed about. However, the ultimate decision lands with each child. They need to be comfortable with the gift they select, comfortable with their budget and know that their sibling will truly enjoy what they purchased.
Our shopping day is one of my favorite days of the year. It brings me great joy to see everyone helping each other and truly thinking about what the other person wants. I love that they are learning to manage money and make wise choices with the resources that they have. But, most of all I love that I can give my kiddos the opportunity to bless each other. I can't wait to do it all over again next year!
This is just one thing that we do to provide our children with an opportunity to manage money. Maybe this won't work for your family, so let me encourage you to find something that will. In today's culture, people are having more money problems than in the past. It amazes me how much money people make and they still aren't able to pay their bills, or they make choices that make it very challenging to pay their bills. I don't want my children to face unnecessary financial struggles because they never learned how to manage their money. Let us all help our children to know that money is just an asset to be used wisely, not something that controls us; and that we don't need lots of money to have fun and bless others.
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