teaching your kids the value of a quarter

i don't get to shop as much as i used to. any parent knows that it's hard to get any time to yourself when you have kids. you can't just up and go to the mall anytime you want to shop. schedules needs to be planned out, babysitters need to be arranged, money needs to be saved. that's why i love thrift shopping; i can bring the kids, make a day out of it – the kids love it, i love it, our bank account loves it.

a while back, our kids were going through a bit of a naughty phase. i was racking my brain trying to figure out how to deal with them. time outs only go so far and taking toys away is pretty much pointless when they are just as happy with a stick and an empty box to play with. so we finally came up with a plan. i realized that there was a way to kill two birds with one stone. every day that they were good (no time outs, no fighting, cleaning their rooms, not talking back...the list goes on), we would give them a quarter. every day that they were naughty, we took a quarter away. at the end of the week, we'd empty their quarter jars and go saling. some weeks they would have a full $1.50, some weeks they'd have nothing, some weeks they'd owe us money. but every week, they would look forward to saturday when we'd pack up the car and drive around town going from garage sale to garage sale. they loved it. they behaved because of it. they learned the value of a quarter from it. they came home with plenty of thrifty finds because of it. and i got to go to all the sales i wanted to while spending some valuable time with my kids. win/win.

saling makes them sleepy!