Need ideas for kid chores and incentives

Wish I would have gotten paid to do chores! 
I did get paid for grades though, starting in middle school. Just food for thought  

I remember being assigned Tue/Thurs/Sat dinner set up and clean up (and was so mad that Thanksgiving ALWAYS fell on a Thursday - not fair!!!)

My son is 7 and daughter is 5. My daughter is not really too interested in earning money yet. My son has a long list of things he wants.

We are just getting started with this idea also. So far the only set in stone thing they are paid for is practicing piano with NO hassle - gets them a quarter. 

They are asked to set the table - not paid. You sit here to eat you can help. I guess they are paid with food on the table .

If they don't eat with nice manners they get the piggy (little plastic toy pig). Whoever ends the meal with the piggy has to clear the table (pinterest idea). Still not paid.....

Cleaning their room is also just their job. Never get paid for that either. If they have it clean on laundry day I will put their laundry away for them. If not - they have to put their own laundry away. I won't go in a messy room.

I have tried to tell my son that chores to earn money have to be things that help Mommy or Daddy have less work to do. But it is too vague and not at all consistent.

But things I have thought about suggesting are:

Scooping the doggie poo

Feeding the dogs

Washing the windows

Running the vacuum

If the room stays clean all week earn a bonus of an extra dollar.

We started trying to do the chore based incentive system where it was do this and we'll give you X amount of money and it didn't work out very well.  It seemed like the kids were always begging to "do something" for money and we'd make up dumb menial tasks so they could get what they wanted.

So, we came up with a completely different approach and oh my goodness did it work out well.  We have three kids and at approximately the ages of 9, 7, & 5 we gave them an automatic allowance of their age every week.  So the 9 year old received $9 per week and the 7 year old received $7.  We paid them on my payday which was every two weeks so they'd get their $18 bucks every other week.

My wife then came up with a list of age appropriate chores for each kid with similar things like are mentioned above.  The middle one would have a chore to empty the garbage can whenever it was full and the youngest would spray lysol and put the liner in the can.  That would be their only chore for that season, and if they ever threw a fit about not doing it or didn't do it then they wouldn't get any allowance at all for that week.  (ouch)  We usually kept the chores relatively light so they were easy for them to do.

Then on the flip side we completely stopped buying them things other than necessity items such as school supplies, clothes and the likes.  If they wanted an X box then they had to save their money to buy the X box.  If they wanted a TV they had to save their money for a TV.  We bought them almost nothing.  We would get them Christmas presents and such, so don't go thinking we're that mean.  lol

I have so many amazing stories about our kids managing their money wisely over the years.  Both of the boys saved up for close to a year to buy X boxes.  They saved up to buy 42" LCD TV's for their rooms with surround sound, iPhones and God knows what other crazy stuff.  But the coolest part is the money management skills and patience that they gained.

As the boys got older and turned 16, they immediately went out job hunting because they wanted bigger and better stuff.  They each wanted a car so we told them they had to make a payment on it.  They budgeted $250/mo. for their car so they knew they had to get a job making X and when they made the first payment we went out and bought them a $10k car.  They then made the payment to us every month on the first and have to buy their own gas.  They simply do not ever ask us for money because they know what the answer will be.  They know that they have to go earn their own money and live within their budget.

The oldest is now in College and the other two are in High School and they still get the same allowance.  We do just give the college one his without any chores.  I think he's earned it at this point.  My wife and I have kind of joked that we're just going to keep giving them their age every week forever.  It's kind of fun. 

I'm not going to profess that this plan is perfect, but our kids are the most financially responsible kids we know and all of their friends think they're spoiled rotten due to the amount of "stuff" they have.  Yet, they buy all of their own stuff.
The oldest has a 760 credit score at 18 and buys everything on a cash rewards card and pays it off every month.  He has no desire to go into any kind of debt and is already saving to buy a new car outright as a graduation present to himself.

Also, I can't remember how old they were, but it was several years ago we set them up with their own checking account and debit card.  This made it a lot easier to auto transfer their allowance into their account every other week.  They also have their own logins to check their balance and see how much money they have.

Tony, I like it.

My son is sitting here while I'm discussing it with my husband. He was all ears until I got to the part about not getting anything if the work is not done. He says "hold on, I think your going a little overboard here" ha ha ha.

But it's a deal - we're starting this week. 7 dollars, he vacuums all the rooms upstairs.

My daughter is going to wash the windows.

Fingers crossed!

Awesome, good luck. 

Originally posted by Goosedog

Originally posted by Left Brain My kids are too old to beat anymore......but they don't know it yet.  They're still taking care of business under the threat of pain.  It's like autopilot for me.

Wait until that boy realizes you're full of it.

He's close.

The trick is to every now an then do something completely stupid crazy to make him go, "man, I just don't know, that dude could still twist off". 

Originally posted by Left Brain My kids are too old to beat anymore......but they don't know it yet.  They're still taking care of business under the threat of pain.  It's like autopilot for me.

lol, my middle one is 16 and plays Defensive End on his football team.  I was screwing around with him one day telling him he had to do something that I was supposed to do.  I started pushing him to make him go into the other room.  Yeah, he pretty much threw me across the room.  At that moment, I realized I no longer had the threat of force in my favor.  lol

We have a chore chart that lists 2 chores per child per day.  They must complete one of them. (so, they get a little bit of control over their destiny.)

They are each allowed 20 minutes of "screen time" a night, at 7PM.  If they have not completed their chore by 7PM, they don't get screen time that day.  (The 4 year old gets a reminder, but the 7 and 9 yo don't) 

Their allowance gets pro-rated by the chores they didn't do.