Book Review: Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work, and Time Well Spent

Teach your kid money doesn’t grow on trees Introduce real-world lessons about life and work  Satisfy your child’s curiosity about the adult world Connect with your kid  Promote a lifelong love of learning Kick-start fiscal understanding

If you have contemplated starting an allowance for your child or maybe just looking for a creative way to just reward your child, check out Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work, and Time Well Spent.  I think this book could even make a bad weather day better with being stuck indoors and looking for activities to do with your child.

Earn It, Learn It has a very different take on earning an allowance, at least from what I knew of it.  I thought an allowance was given for basic household chores, like taking out the garbage, helping set the table, loading/unloading the dishwasher, etc.  Alisa Weinstein explains that we, as adults, don’t get paid for doing common duties in the household, they should be done because we all pitch in as a family, and being part of a family is like being part of a team.  Teamwork is critical to be a happy family and not just one or two people should be responsible for all of the work.  Alisa says you can still teach a child to do household chores, like setting the table for a few weeks to build responsibility, but still take on the Earn My Keep Allowance Program.  Or simply stating that privileges come with responsibilities, like not setting the table could mean the loss
of watching television and so forth.

Alisa started plans for this book after her four-year-old requested a tube of pink lip gloss while they were at the store and her daughter already had many tubes of lip gloss.  This started the quest of teaching the value of the dollar and creating 50 “mini-professional” careers for her daughter and others to experience and learn from.  I thought this was an interesting concept, stirring possible interest in a child for a future career that I would have never thought of exposing her to, rewarding her for a job well done, and potentially giving some insight on the value of the dollar.

With the 50 careers, there is no set reward value, which is up to the family.  Alisa recommends a deadline that can have some flexibility, but should be kept if at all possible, like a boss would expect a project to be done within a certain amount of time.

There are also different levels to each career in the book.  An example is a level 1 for Dietitian:  “visit the library or the Web to report about the history of the Food Pyramid.  How has it changed to match our nation’s health over time?”  Level 2: is to tour a grocery store as a “dietitian” and to identify some healthy food choices.  A Level 3 is to actually shadow a dietitian.  

I like how everything is laid out with some flexibility in the book.  Some careers are ones we would all think of, others not, like a UX Researcher.  I personally did not even know what that career was!  There are over 900 activities in Earn It, Learn It.

 Alisa also mentioned that some jobs are not included for safety reasons, like a firefighter.  She didn’t want a child to start a fire and attempt to put it out.  There were a few other common trades not used for safety reasons.

I think overall, Ms. Weinstein has a realistic idea of teaching the value of money.  I think this is a neat way to give a child some real life experiences that can help teach responsibility and focus, or spur interest in a future career path.  I have read the book
and now need to come up with a monetary value to the tasks and pick a career for my daughter to start with and an acceptable deadline.

Disclosure:  I have received a copy of this book for review.  No other compensation was received.  The thoughts and feelings expressed are my own.