Monies....

As a part of raising children, Steven and I feel it is our job to help our children understand how money works. There are way too many people out in the world that have no concept of money and how it works. People who think money grows on tree and are fiscally irresponsible. I don't want my children to live from paycheck to paycheck because I didn't teach them how to use money. (Don't even get me started....I could rant for hours on people and their poor money choices.)

So, to start teaching our children young (or brainwash them while young and highly impressionable), we decided to give them some chores to do around the house and assigned dollar values to them. When they complete a chore, they get to check it off their chore chart and at the end of the week they turn in their sheet and get cold, hard cash.

As part of this lesson, the children need to pay their tithing, put money in savings and then they can do what they want with the rest.

For those of you who don't know what tithing is, let me explain. In our church, we believe that God has given us everything that we have. He in turn asks us to give back one-tenth of our increase. That money goes to the church and they use it to build and run the church.

This is a difficult concept to teach to a small child, especially a 2 year old who is getting money of his own for the first time. In my infinite wisdom, I attempted to explain to Owen that he needed to part with some of his money. Since he has a great love of Jesus, I decided to try that angle. I told Owen that he needed to give some of his "monies" to Jesus. Jesus would use it to help the church. He said, "Give Jesus monies?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Okay." Much easier than I thought it would be. We counted out his tithing and put it into and envelope. He was very excited.

Here is Logan showing you his allowance with tithing slip in hand.
Owen was so excited about his monies that he couldn't be bothered to look at the camera. Holding his monies and tithing slip (ie. Monies for Jesus).
So to wrap up this charming tale. Yesterday, wile we were at church, Owen and I we were looking at his quiet book that has various church related pictures. When we got to the first picture of Jesus he says, "Jesus...monies!?!" Sure enough, we had forgotten the tithing envelopes. At least Owen learned where his tithing money goes.