Odd Jobs

This summer, the kids seem to have hit the magical age where they are asked to help neighbors with various chores and jobs.

The first was Keely being asked to cat sit for a neighbor who I know through working on the neighborhood board. Her cat sitter moved away, and she asked if Keely would be up to the task. Her first assignment - a week's worth of once a day visits to feed her, change water, check litterbox, and bring in the mail and paper. She gets paid $5 a day, so that first assignment was good for $35 - pretty much a fortune for a 9 year old. She put about half in the bank and enjoyed having extra money to spend. Since then, she's had two more assignments - each for two days so another $10 each time. The Fall looks to be busy for her, as the folks she's cat sitting for are also Hokie fans and they travel to Blacksburg each time there is a home game. I'm so jealous of that, but our time will come - their two children are grown and they have the freedom to leave on a whim. The only negative of this 'job' is that I have to accompany her - their house is not on our street, but a short bike ride away. It's not a big deal but I hope when she gets a bit older, she'll head over there on her own. The cat is super sweet too, and we enjoy petting her soft fur while we are there. It's a big change from our 15 year old grumpy old man cat :)

Both kids were also asked to water plants for our next door neighbor, and that initial job has turned into a few more jobs for her. They have now watched her dog for a couple of nights, and Quinn has started mowing her lawn. For the dog sitting which also includes bringing in the mail and checking the plants, they split $5 a visit. And for mowing the lawn, Quinn gets $15 each time! So now both of them always seem to have more cash than me :)

As I would have predicted, they are very different in their spending habits. Keely has hers spent before she gets it, and usually 'spends' it many ways before she actually uses it. We have to kind of force her to put some in the bank - although when we showed her how much money was in her bank account and how she could save for something big, i.e. a car, she seemed to have more incentive to put some of her earnings in the bank. Quinn is more of a saver, and he carefully picks what he wants to spend his money on - not typically spending it all, and then even asking to take a trip to the bank to deposit some money. His weakness is Legos, and he's asked to go to the Lego store now that he has cash in his pocket. But his asking is more infrequent - whereas with Keely, she asks and asks and then asks some more, until we cry 'Uncle!' and take her to the store of her choice (this week, it was AC Moore so she could buy paint for her 'masterpiece').

Quinn will also likely be switching from lawn mowing at our neighbor's to leaf raking this Fall, and Keely will have at least 5 more weekends of cat sitting. Now if we could only get them to do these chores - lawn mowing and cleaning the litter box, to name a couple - at our house!