Money

My children are obsessed about money. If you know my children you know that they obsess about many things. Right now they are obsessed with getting more and more money. Jaxon is freaking out about Yu-Gi-Oh cards. He loves them. He talks about them constantly. He feels that he will not be a complete person until he has an “Egyptian God card”, or all eight of them. It drives me crazy. I don’t understand them or see the need for them. Jaxon has to buy them himself if he wants them.

We are trying to teach the children a little bit about money. I stole my big brothers good idea. We give them allowance of how old they are so they get 6 dollars and 3 dollars a month. That is for doing all of their normal jobs and following our house rules and stuff. This way we teach them about tithing, saving for things they really want, and if they see something at the store, they can not beg me for it, they can buy it themselves. Last fall I offered Jaxon one penny per rock he picked up in our garden. I was so sick of rocks and I thought it would give him an incentive to work. That was before he was obsessed with money so he got about 23 cents. This spring I renewed that offer thinking that it would be the same. Oh no, he wants to buy an Egyptian God card and he knows how much they are and 6 dollars isn’t enough to buy that card pack. So a few weeks ago we gave him his 6 dollars. He needed 10 dollars plus tax. So we were working in our yard and he gathered 500 rocks in about 1 hour. (Did I mention that we have a lot of rocks in our flower beds?). That was great except that I can’t be giving him 5 dollars for every time he picks up rocks for an hour. His allowance for the month is only 6 dollars. So after I kept my promise of one cent per rock and gave him 5 dollars, I changed the deal. Now he has to pick up 4 rocks for a cent. He wanted to know why. I told him it was because of supply and demand. There are less rocks and I don’t need him to get them as much so the price went down. He didn’t get it but he said OK. I didn’t want to tell him that he would make us broke and totally sick of Yu-Gi-Oh cards if he got that price for rocks.

So now whenever the kids do any work, they want to know how much I am going to pay them. I tell them that they help in the house or yard because they are part of the family and that is for their allowance. They are always disappointed.

Yesterday Tanner was following the water in the gutter down the street. (One of the favorite past times lately.) He got ahead of it and started making a dam out of grass clippings and dirt that he found in the gutter. He worked really hard on it and it was fun. While we were walking home I told him that I was proud of him for making such a good dam. He said, “Ya, and it was a lot of hard work, how much money will you pay me for that?” I told him, "nothing because it didn’t help me keep my house or yard clean". He said “Oh.”