Earlier today, I left you pondering this: What would happen if I put my kids in charge of buying their own food? Clearly they consume the most food in the house, and I wondered if they had to spend their own money, if it would cause us to spend less overall. So I am engaging in a little experiment. Here are the rules:
The twins don’t count: their food is all on us. They don’t get the concept of saving money and frankly, they’ll eat whatever is on their plate.
My four year old only has to spend her own money on special snacks that she might want. (Those evil Dunkin Donut people are sitting right across the street from all of their classes.) Donuts are on her. Fruit and cheese and crackers–on me. Again, I thought the idea of having to save up for more than a donut a week would just go well over her head.
But my 6 year old and 8 year old–well, they can do it. So here’s what we did. We created a reasonable budget that allowed for the purchase of:
one large cereal box from Costco per month
Lunch for two weeks
$1 per day for snacks. (My kids usually eat a mid-morning and pre-dinner snack.
Dinner is free as are fruits and vegetables. It seemed only logical to do this because I feared that someone would catch on that they could buy a bag of chips for the same amount of money as an orange and well, that’s not a good direction to go in. However, I wasn’t sure if adding this rule would actually make this more expensive.
We’ve just completed our first week of putting the kids in charge. I have stories galore but I can’t give away whether or not it was a success. You’ll just have to come back. In the meantime, make sure to check out other money saving ideas!
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