So okay, like I really have the time to do this today. I don’t, but hey, I’m entitled to play hooky once in a while.
While getting ready to get back to work after a sumptuous lunch of pork sinigang that my hubby prepared for us before leaving for a business trip, I was browsing through Facebook and came across the link to the latest blog post of a Mommy friend, a fellow homeschooling, soon-to-be WAHM, Racquel Guevara. Her post was about teaching her children life skills, one of which is making bank deposits. There was an invitation to comment, and I did. It was kind of kilometric that I thought, hmmm… I have not been posting anything on my blog because I don’t have the time, and yet I had the time to write that long comment. So why not write a quick post, while I’m at it? And the topic is good. Right along the alley of homeschooling moms.
As parents, it is really up to us to teach our children life skills Those that will really matter in their journey through life. Oh yeah, nouns and pronouns are important, but those are things that they will learn anyway, as they trudge along the levels of education.
But what they really need are what can’t be learned inside the fours walls of a classroom. And that’s why we homeschool. Because we want to learn as we live. Not just when we are attending classes or lectures. And while it is true that the best things in life are free, like hugs, and kisses, and laughter; bills still need to get paid. And no matter what the song says, love alone won’t keep us alive. So we show them the value of hard work, we make them understand that money is not something we should take for granted, we teach them how to budget and save and work.
For our 13-year old, we have started to give her a hands-on training on budgeting and saving. Since she already attends a traditional school, she already takes a daily allowance. When she was eleven, we opened a bank account for her, in her name, with her signature. No ATM card, just a passbook that I keep. Then last year, when she started attending a traditional school, I asked her to make a passbook out of the pages of her old notebook. I made her a deal. That I would match whatever amount she could save. She’s really crazy over an electric guitar (forgive my ignorance, but I believe it’s called a Gibson Les Paul, or something with Cherry) and she knows it’s expensive so, the sweet girl that she is, she’s not really pushing it. Such a blessing that our children really understand our economic standing, but this I may write about next time. So I told her that it’s really going to take me some time to raise the funds for that, but if she’ll help, we may find a way to get it sooner. So every afternoon, she would give me whatever amount is left from her day’s allowance, and I would record it on her passbook, and I would sign. By the end of the school year, we were able to deposit Php5,500. Php2,750.00 came from her, plus the matching amount from me. And during the year, too, she was able to buy some of her school project materials without asking from me.
Well, what do you know, but this year, she may end up with a lot bigger amount, since she’s been doing some copy-paste jobs for me on weekends and holidays. Tasks like converting Powerpoint to Text, or taking out data from a PDF file to be put in Excel. And last December, she did not ask for a field trip allowance, instead she used part of her savings to buy souvenirs for us all. And I really appreciate that about her. That while she knows spending on souvenirs could mean less savings for her, she really doesn’t seem to mind. She does know the value of giving, too!
Marge, also known as The Happy WAHM, is a virtual assistant who turned her passion for entrepreneurship into a worthy endeavor of offering complete business solutions to CEOs and business owners around the world. She turned her back on a thriving corporate career to become a hands-on mom and created a lifestyle that allowed her to build a homebased career, homeschool her children, and still have time to pursue her passion for arts and crafting.
She only posts her content on her website, TheHappyWAHM.com. If you see this content on someone else’s site then it is NOT by any means authorized.
