Free Financial Charts for Hardworking Kids

Dear Jennifer,

My husband and I have considered giving our kids an allowance to teach money management, but the idea doesn’t set well with either of us. We favor the idea of having our kids do extra jobs to earn money. Then invest the money to make more.

A good example was recently my oldest daughter had a goal to earn $50 for her GA’s Annie Armstrong offering. First she sold our chicken eggs to the neighbors. The profits were split between me, her brother and herself. She made $7. She then took that money and bought cake mix and supplies for cupcakes. She sold them at church and to neighbors. Took some of those profits, bought more mix… you get the idea. By the time she finished, she more than doubled her goal…. This girl has now invested in yarn to make dishcloths which she intends to sell.

My son who is 7 is considering a business venture making address signs out of materials here on our property. He has been encouraged to draw some funds from his savings account to invest in a few supplies to get started.

The 4 year old collects eggs for a penny a piece. Just to get the idea of working and earning and tithing. She is doing well and may get a raise soon.

Now comes the reason for my contacting you. I am no finance genius though I am striving to learn. I am also not great at creating forms. I feel my children need a good form to track investing and earning. A kid friendly business budget form would be great! Do you have any idea of where to find one?

Thank you,
Cheryl

PS. Thanks for your website. Love it.

What a great testimonial, Cheryl! I love the resourcefulness you are building into your children.

As for budget forms, we’ve always used a couple of very simple charts for tracking our children’s earnings — we keep all the children’s spending accounts on one page, which stays in Mom’s notebook, and track their savings on a second page which stays in Dad’s file drawer.

However, it sounds like you’re looking for something your children can use to keep track of their own finances. Take a look at this set of Kids’ Financial Forms and see if they might match what you had in mind.

The first chart will help them budget the money they earn: some to spend, some to save, and some to share:

Here’s how this form might look when it’s filled out:

I also included some brainstorming exercises to help budding young entrepreneurs come up with ways to earn money:

Here’s a few things our kids have tried over the years. Have your kids write down as many as they can think of. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are practical or not, they’ll pare down their original list in the next exercise.

Once they’ve finished the first brainstorming session, have them pick their favorite two or three ideas and expand upon them. What materials would they need? How much time would be required? What would they charge?

Here’s what this page might look like once it’s filled in:

Once they settle on a service to provide or a product to sell, they will need to keep careful track of all their expenses. This form will help them do that:

And here’s another form they can use to keep track of jobs or orders:

Information from the last two forms can be consolidated and recorded on this one, which will help kids track profits and note trends over the course of a full year.