Back in 2006, the year YouTube started to be a thing (which is completely irrelevant to this post, but amuses me nonetheless), David & I were still fairly newlywed and trying to wrap our brains around being adults, much less responsible ones. I had this novel idea to get a better grasp on our time by making some play “time” money. I imagine it was my own sort of creative way to subtly encourage a more boyish David to spend less time playing computer games as mentioned in this post, LOL. I even set up a “Time Budget”.
I’d love to tell you that we found the holy grail of life organization, but the best of intentions will only get you so far… I think what especially threw a wrench in things at the time was finding out we were going to become parents. When your brains goes into that zone all bets are off.
Having this play money in our vault for 7 years now, I think it’s high time we shared it. Here are a few ideas for some fun uses:
- use it as “coupons” to your spouse for time spent however they like (or specify, whichever makes more sense for you)
- print some off for the kids to make their own stash of play money for imaginative play (you can even let them draw themselves in the picture frame)
- set up a simple time budget to motivate yourself – “earn” free time by checking something off your To Do list
- utilize the money in a chore system by assigning each chore a dollar amount and set up rewards that your kids can use their “money” on
What other ideas do you have?
I’m sure it can be a great tool in homeschooling as well, so I’d love to know what you do with it! Print the different denominations on different colors of paper for easy distinction.
If you download, sharing is always appreciated 😉
