5 Ways Kids Can Make Their Own Money
Kids tend to be good little businessmen, willing to do whatever they can to make some money. The five tips in this article will help you impress upon your children the value of the money they earn.
1. Find work around the house. Apart from normal chores, additional jobs can be chosen based on age and what needs to be done to care for the home. Inventing some job just because a child wants to earn money is really no different from pulling cash straight from your wallet and putting it into the child’s eager hands. Payment should be reasonable. For example, paying children forty or fifty dollars to clean out closets is not realistic, while ten normally would be.
2. Start offering a needed service in the neighborhood. Kids can start up lawn care services as soon as they are old enough to handle the responsibility. Parents, however, will have to help their children in making all the necessary arrangements. Putting services and fees on fliers and then delivering them around the neighborhood is a good first step. No doubt there is some potential clientele in the area, especially busy individuals and older folks. Keep an eye on the kids, but allow them to do the work, offering to help only if they really need it.
3. Create crafts to sell on eBay. Your child may be the type that enjoys making crafts. If they have the knack, there is a market to sell their wares. EBay offers a no-pressure situation where kids can see business in action. Follow the policies for setting up an account. If they are too young, you may have to own the account. Take pictures of the items and assist your child in writing a description of them for a viewing audience. Selling on eBay introduces kids to the art of owning and maintaining a business.
4. Enlist their help in monitoring younger siblings. A child of seven or eight is old enough to keep an eye on a three year old while you are in the house. This is not a babysitting job, but a monitoring one. If you need to cook dinner or finish some other household chore, hire your youngster to keep an eye on their brothers and/or sisters while you do so.
Don’t confuse them with lots of rules. Just make sure they understand the important things. The younger child has to be followed and watched at all times, toys shouldn’t be in their mouths, and they have to be protected from dangerous things in the home, like the stove.
5. Hold a yard sale. Selling clothes they don’t wear or toys they haven’t used in a long time is another way kids can earn their own money. Yard sales often kill two birds with one stone. The child will clean out his room while getting rid of clutter as well. As opposed to simply throwing sellable items away or uselessly filling the attic with them, a yard sale can be truly beneficial.
As kids learn about the value of money, they will progressively ask to do more work. These tips are a great place to start, but adding more ideas will help you help your youngsters grow to be financially responsible adults.
Tags: Personal Finance