I Dare You To Eat It

A couple of years ago Lizzie had what we termed the Bummer Summer. On the very last day of school she became terribly ill with mononucleosis. After almost eight weeks of missed parties, sleeping while her friends went swimming, and an early bedtime every single night, she was finally well enough to…have her tonsils out. NOT so fun.

This year Lizzie has hit the summer vacation with a vengeance and her goal is to earn money. She began her quest packing a little debt so the first order of business was to lighten her load. Right before the school year ended, one of her best friends had box seats for a Taylor Swift concert. The cost of her ticket was $50.00. Then she made the mistake (in the moment) of buying a stupid t-shirt for $25.00. I get what happened and I appreciate the kind mom that spotted her the cash because it meant everything to Lizzie at the time, but we had a sweet moment the next day when I explained how many hours she would have to work to pay back the money spent on a shirt she would wear once.

I only know one way to teach children about financial responsibility and a strong work ethic. It simply boils down to not giving them everything they want. Children will work if they need to in order to get the things that they want. We’ve tried to teach responsibility by giving responsibility. Our daughters have never been paid a dime of allowance and they’ve learned to be pretty careful with their money. Less than one week after school was out for the summer, Lizzie came to me and demanded that we sit down and work out her budget so that she could get her debts paid off and then get earning the other things she wants. She’s twelve.

I told her to start with the number owed on her cell phone bill and we added it to the recent concert expenses. (P.S. The only reason she has a cell phone is that we gave up our land line, but we still let her pay half of the monthly cost on the absolute very lowest, no frills, no long distance, no voice mail, and no texting plan that we could find.) Next Lizzie made a number of phone calls to women in our neighborhood and asked if they needed any babysitting help. She had five jobs scheduled within the first 15 minutes and at $7.00 per hour–her tithing and debts were easily paid off in one week.

I’m happy for Lizzie and thinking every day that this is an AWESOME summer camp! She’s up early and out of the house, fully engaged, focused on a goal, learning all sorts of new things, and comes home knowing that she’s capable and really accomplishing something.