Budgeting for kids

Some time in 2023, we started giving Kai his allowance on a weekly instead of daily basis. Wanted him to budget for himself. I thought I would start that for Yang in P5 as well but as it turned out, I ran out of change some time last year so I started him on weekly allowance too :p

Yu wanted a weekly allowance too but this boy... Maybe later..

So far so good, no one ran out of money for food during recess. But it's also quite clear who spends the most when I got them to count their savings since P1 - as at end 2024:

• Kai: $250
• Yang: $150
• Yu: $150

Yang enjoys buying things from the bookshop - notebooks, pens, country erasers, picture cards etc *.* So he's maybe $50 short after four years, averaging $13 on random bits from the bookshop each year.

Oh well, he's happy. So be it. 

Now these boys are always complaining about my food. Since we eat out more during the school holidays, I thought we could give them a say in what we eat for the last two weeks in November. It's also a budgeting exercise, not with individual weekly allowance but two weeks' worth of dinner budget for a family of five.

Based on past years' expenditure* in the last two weeks of November, we gave them a budget of $378. Of the 14 days, we spent a day with the grands so that saved them some money. Then, they played with the options on Google Sheets. 

* We keep track of our expenditure. Im fact, I have records all the way to uni! All on MS Excel and more recently, Google Sheets.

At first, they maximised eating out. Then, Sito asked them why they didn't include BBQ buffet which they liked. Somehow that led to Japanese buffet. So they changed their options to include more home-cooked food and coffeeshop meals so that they could have a buffet.

And this was how we ended up at Kiseki again! 

What are they conspiring...

Kai's hair was so long that he looked like ah beng :p

Yang and Yu came over to our side; Kai declined

At the end of all accounting, they had a surplus of $9.50, woohoo!