What’s the Right Age to Start an Allowance?

What does that look like?

When I was a kid, we had a list of chores to do, and if we got them done we would get an allowence.  When I turned 10 I got my first job — a paperboy.  My brother also had a route and between my brother, my father and I we would deliver almost 300 papers every day.  We would get up early, fold them deliver them and then find time during the weekend to collect money.  I delivered papers until I was about 17 years old  then I got a “real” job.  It was nice, I felt in general I worked less and made more money, but I was not my own “boss” anymore.  I learned a lot as a paperboy and I am glad that I did it.  I got a lot out of it, not only in material possessions but confidence when it comes to money.

My son CheeseWiz turned six earlier this year, and he finished his first year of kindergarten.  He learned so much during his year in kindergarten, and one of the things he learned about was about money.  The older he gets the more interested he is in money.  He wants it, he knows the difference between a nickle, dime, quarter and dollar.   He has a basic understanding that things cost different amounts of money and he wants to do whatever it takes to have more money.

The downside to this is that (like his father) when he gets certain things in his head he obsesses over them.

We have decided that we are not going to give him a weekly allowance but we are going to give him “extra” chores around the house to earn money.  There is always something to do around the house and after he gets his “regular” chores done then he will have an opportunity to do the “extra” ones.

This works to a point, but he always wants to do extra chores and as soon as he earns a dollar he wants to spend it.  So what is one to do?

We are teaching him the difference between giving, spending and saving which I think is important.  He gets it…..to a certain point.  I think the one thing that has changed since we have started this whole process.  He is thinking about his money, he is deciding what he wants to do with his money.

Our hope in doing this is not only to teach him about spending, saving, and giving, but to start good money habits early.  As we progress in this process we will share our successes and failures.

When I read about Luther’s Table Talks I envision Luther sitting with some friends at a pub and they are all talking about their belief’s of God, theology, marriage, the pope and just about everything else in life.

I would like to offer this chance for the LGC online community.  Every now and again I will offer an idea, quote, or other theological concept and put it out there for you to comment on.  My hope is that you will participate and we can have a fruitful discussion.

Table Talk #1

Here I Stand

The following is a clip of the movie Luther.  It is when Martin Luther is at the Diet of Worms and he is asked to recant his writings.  Well Luther could not in good concious recant what he KNEW was right based on the Word of God.

Here is the clip

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5P7QkHCfaI

Questions:

1.  Do you believe Luther was right?

2.  Could you of done what Luther did?

3.  Share a time when you stood up against the “popular” because you thought you were doing what God called you to do.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVZijG4WSOw

Now I hope you have taken some times this summer to rest, relax and renew yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. Hopefully you have gotten a chance to get away and spend time with your family and friends. My prayer is that at this point you are not feeling like your life is out of control. If you are it’s okay, and it is going to happen.

As I look at my calendar, school is starting in less than a month! It is a time during the year when stress is at an all time high…..school starts, community programs start, in a way it seems like September is more of a “New Year” than January.

A friend told me one time that if you want to change something about yourself, start it in September because our natural rhythms for change occurs more during September rather in January……food for thought.

At this point may feel prepared for the fall to come. You may feel like you have things under control – but then “it” happens. “It” could be an unexpected car repair, an unexpected medical bill, an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, or any number of things that puts you back to square one. Suddenly you feel as if you’re completely off course, and it seems like it is almost impossible to recover.

At times like this, there are a few things it may help you to remember. First of all, no one can control every aspect of his or her life, and adversity comes to all of us at one point or another. It doesn’t matter how happy we try and make ourselves be, it doesn’t matter how many spreadsheets we make or how good our attitude is. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

Second, I would like to suggest two things that you can do when you feel like things are starting to get out of control. The first is to pray about it, to ask God for help and strength when things are troubling you. Granted that might not be a short term solution but it is something that I feel is a big help when you are feeling bad.

The second thing is to think about what your response is going to be. When you find yourself overcome with feelings of fear, helplessness, and overall chaos, you can choosing to shift the focus of the thoughts that are running through your mind. Our mental image of ourselves greatly determines the path that our lives go down. So mentally choose good feelings and sooner or later they will come.

Your feelings are a direct result of the thoughts you think, and one of the ways we can try and prevent feelings of lost of control is to set aside some time every morning and evening for positive affirmation, or prayer which can be an effective way of getting these thoughts back under your control again.

This time last week we were just getting home from a week’s vacation.  We were relaxed, excited to be together as a family once again and ready to come home.

Once we got home we got acclimated to home life again, we got back to reality and it has been crazy!

This week I have experienced many different aspects of what it means to be a Pastor — I have been walking with people through different life experiences, those with whom life has given to much to handle, to those who have experienced loss in their life, to those who are helping me plan the next chapter in the life of the church.  It has been a crazy, but good week of ministry.

As I posted, my blog has taken a whole new look (not on purpose).  I still have a lot of work to do in order to get the blog to a place where I am completely happy with it.  But I think it is taking shape.  My biggest problem is importing my posts from November of last year.  I have them saved in my Google Reader, and the only way I know how to retrieve them is by cutting and pasting.  Not the best way to import them but it is better than completely losing all that work.

Now that I have caught up some at work, I hope to finish getting things ready at the church for the fall.  It is going to be a busy and fun time at  St. Mark’s.

I have been thinking about the goal and purpose of my blog.  I have so many interests that I want to write about I started to feel like my blog had not purpose or direction.  I had some ideas to help with that, so I started tinkering with some themes.  Well in the midst of tinkering, I received a fatal error…….no one likes the fatal error.

After some googling and conversations with friends who know more about computers than I do, I came to the realization that I had to uninstall and reinstall wordpress.

Over the next several weeks I am going to be putting most of my time and energy into getting this blog up and running again — one of the things that I realized is that I have not backed up my posts since November of last year.  I thought I lost everything!  But thanks to a friend, I realized that I have the posts saved in Google Reader.  Granted I have to copy and past them into a new blog post but at least they are there.

Thank you for your patience during this time and I look forward to showing you a new look and better, consistent content.

Well as I was playing with some features today, I got a critical error which let me to uninstall WordPress and reinstall it.  Well that whole process completely wiped out my blog and everything that went with it.

I hope to find some backup of my blog post but something is telling me that might not be possible.

This really stinks…….