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Review: "Earn It, Learn It" by Alisa T. Weinstein

Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work, and Time Well Spent is a new book featuring a groundbreaking twist on traditional allowance called Earn My Keep. In short, this book gives you all the tools you need to set up “careers” for your children and have them earn their keep that way. You can set it up how you’d like: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc., in whichever way fits your lifestyle best. Geared toward children 4-12, you give them their tasks for their job and they are expected to complete them in a certain time frame to earn their allowance.


This unique way of doing allowance teaches children several things:

1. Household chores are part of being in a family. Adults don’t get paid for doing laundry or making their bed and neither should children.


2. Being in the workforce is hard, demanding, and sometimes boring.


3. Money is not just handed out. We all must earn it.

Plus, it gives children a valuable set up for choosing a career in life. If they do their time as a chef and discover they love to cook, hello possible future career! If they do their time as a meteorologist and hate it, they have still learned a little about what they’d like in their future.

This book gives you all the information from a been-there-done-that parent who tried this method with her own children with fantastic results. And, to sweeten the deal, it comes complete with 49 ready-made careers to do and a “Create Your Own” chapter to design careers that fit your family. It even comes with many ready-to-copy or print handouts in the book or on their website, www.earnmykeep.com.

We started the Earn My Keep method 2 weeks ago, with the first career of being “Mom”. I had both my kids help with all the things I do daily and weekly including making meals, doing laundry, taking care of the daycare kids (with supervision, of course), doing paperwork, and even writing their own reviews of products. I think these 2 weeks of “being mom” have really raised their appreciation of me and what I do. There have been several times that they’ve said things like, “Man, you do A LOT!” They are very excited about pursuing the other careers in the book, and I’m looking forward to watching them learn as we go.

You can learn more about Earn My Keep on their website, www.earnmykeep.com or by visiting Earn My Keep on Facebook. You can purchase Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work, and Time Well Spent online from www.sourcebooks.com, www.amazon.com, and other retailers of educational books. This book retails for $14.99 in paperback.


Thank you to SourceBooks for sending us a complimentary sample copy of this book to base this review upon.