Kids Earning Cash through Chores and More

by Maggie S
(Iceland)

My kids used to earn their pocket money mostly through work in the house and selling services to our neighbors.

Some household chores were decided to be simply a part of being a family and did not merit any payment, but others, like washing the car and mowing the lawn, we deemed sufficiently out of the everyday-household frame to be worthy of pay.

When he was 14 years old, my oldest son took on a paper route in our neighborhood which supplied him with a steady income for the two years he held it.

Johnny also took it upon himself to be the resident dog walker for a lot of our elderly neighbors for a small fee per dog. It wasn't much, but he enjoyed the activity and was fiercely proud of earning money with something he came up with himself like that. He sometimes referred to himself as the small business owner in the family, and of course he was pretty much right. It was his own business, small as it was, and he loved it.

My daughter then took on this same paper route when her brother gave it up, and she earned the bulk of her spending money that way for a year and a half. She babysat for our neighbors as well, every second or third weekend or so for most of her high-school years.

One summer they both offered their services to clean pools and mow lawns in the neighborhood and earned some cash that way, although there weren't half as many pools then as there are today.