Encourage Children to Earn Money for Digital Items Through Entrepreneurial Actions

These days kids not only want video games and traditional toys but also online tokens, "soul gems", and other digital currency items for the games they play online. If you're a parent and allow your child to play these types of games you have to decide where they will fund the extras the game will require—do you just pay it yourself or do you make the child use their allowance?

Personal finance weblog Man Vs. Debt author Adam Baker's young daughter wanted to buy extra virtual tokens for a kiddie-MMO, Baker responded by asking what she think she could do to earn a little extra spending money. Turns out the kid loves to make paintings and her dad and her worked out a plan to sell several of her paintings to relatives at six quarters each. The girl painted five or six paintings, an activity she enjoys, and sold all of her paintings to relatives who were eager to add her work to their refrigerator.

Whether it's a lemonade stand, cookies, or even finger paintings, encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit in your children will teach them about the work that goes into earning money and they may even decide not to spend their hard-won quarters on frivolous downloads. Baker's daughter has yet to spend the quarters she earned painting.