Earning Money with $5 Book Reviews

Jordan and I don’t give our kids pocket money. They can earn money for doing additional chores around the house on top of the chores they are assigned, which normally only happens when one of them comes to me to ask for something they want but it is not close to their birthday or Christmas.

I have felt that if I give them money regularly they will waste it on junk food or junk toys. The Barefoot Investor would have me teaching them how to spend and save money now, but I just haven’t gotten to the point of handing over cash without effort. I feel like if I start doing that then it’s time to delegate to them responsibility for buying necessities like clothes and I’m not ready for that either.

A number of years ago I was listening to a podcast where the guest was a self-made young millionaire (or billionaire? can’t quite remember). He talked about a parenting strategy his father had employed. The father’s theory was that as an adult in the real world you get paid comparatively little for doing household chores as there is no barrier to that type of job. Everyone should be able to clean a toilet, empty a rubbish bin, mop or vacuum a floor, wipe walls and windows, etc. So he was not going to give his child money for doing chores they should easily be able to do for themselves.

Instead the father told the son (who was a teenager at this point) that he would pay him $20 for every book he read as reading, learning, thinking, understanding and educating oneself was of great value.

With this in mind, I have instituted something in my house called $5 book reviews. The strategy I’m trying to implement is that my kids will learn that reading and writing can be economically beneficial. They can work, produce and create to earn money and have the opportunity to learn about saving and spending.

Rules for the $5 book review

• The book they read should not be too easy. They don’t have to read it by themselves, but the book review should be written without too much help. (Thus only kids who have learned to write can opt in to the scheme.)
• They can template I have created for the book review where they list the publication details and categorise the book.
• The length of the book review is dependant on the child’s grade level. Grade 1 = 1 paragraph, Grade 2 = 2 paragraphs, etc.
• The child might use the prompt page which has a list of questions which can be used to get ideas for the book review. Not all questions are relevant to all books, and the child can write about something that is not covered on the prompt page.

We have had pretty good success with this so far. My two older kids really embraced the scheme and have produced books reviews that have earned them the $5. Win-win. Kids get money and parents sneakily teach them about the value of reading and writing and working for what you want.

If you feel like you want to give this a go with your kids, my book review templates are available as PDF downloads here.

Edit: We have been running this scheme for a few years now and it’s been fairly successful. Reviews have been written to fund pet guinea pigs and other parentally refused acquisitions. The grade 6 boy seems to think $5 for a 6-paragraph report is a bit cheap, so we might revise the scheme for high school next year.