“The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty.” Proverbs 21:5
One of the series our church has been doing is on Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU). After terminating and slicing our 4 credit cards to tiny little pieces (one of them hubby used to make guitar picks out of), we essentially are still at the baby stage of this financial principle application.
The envelope method
Although FPU is not just primarily about using the envelope method, this is the first thing that I was doubtful of (as FPU entails following after this), when I first encountered this financial principle. I have always heard of the envelope method (I kind of always thought it was primitive!) Who does cash purchases nowadays, anyway! Unless it is a “suking tindahan, sari-sari store” purchase, we always, for the most part, have been shopping cashless. Mostly using our debit cards. We always felt safe doing this. It was not until I got a grasp of why it should be like such, that I knew for sure that it really is a non-negotiable if we want to be in control of our finances and not the other way around. It was when Dave Ramsey explained why “every penny has a name,” then something in the hubby and me clicked! Resulting in our being sold out to FPU.
Our Homeschooler’s Commission Worksheet (patterned after Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Junior)
This totally makes sense than our former 52 Week Money Challenge Plan. There are a handful of drawbacks to sticking with the 52-Week plan. Because there are necessities and sustenance to figure in our financial priorities, getting that 52-Week for our focal point means steering clear of other needs for this. And what’s going to happen after 52 Weeks? We are not really building financial wisdom for our family if it has a deadline. Sure, we can do another set of 52-Weeks year after year. But it just does not take care of building financial wisdom by having one mind in evaluating needs and primarily looking towards building a heritage of financial wisdom for our children. The 52-Week Money Challenge can be considered when we have mastered the FPU principle enough and we have that extra envelope named, “52-Week Money Challenge.” 🙂
After figuring in our household income and expenses and setting up our Quick Budget list, we headed on over to switching from Allowance to Commission Method for our son. I forgot how Dave Ramsey worded it, but it sounded like, “What allowance? Allowance is for the lazy!” I totally blushed when he blurted that out! Embarrassed. At least that was how it sounded to me and the revelation as he explained the hows and whys behind it made a whole lot of sense.
As we switched our son to commission method, he is not just taught discipline through age-appropriate house chores, he is also taught the value of hard work. It pays to work. Literally. We love how he is excited to take part on tithing too, even while he is homeschooling. Before this, we do not regularly give him allowance. We forget. Haha! The convenience of homeschooling does that to home educators. Even the student does not feel the need for it primarily because he has everything he needs at home. But the thing about it is whenever we are out, it is easy for us to get him what he wants. Although he does not get everything he wants, if we can afford it, we usually find no reason to withhold it from him. Something that’s not uncommon to parents. Gifts are entirely a different story altogether and we have an envelope for that. 😉
The highest paying chore for our homeschooler is getting a perfect score on his PACE tests
Doing this commission method is a form of practical teaching for our son to learn to save up for the things he wants as opposed to our old norm where he just asks for us to buy them for him. When he finally gets what he wants, he will be bound to value them just because he bought them with his very own “hard earned money.” Oh, I cannot remember the number of times we bought him toys and that ended up lying around at random parts of the house in just a few days. And regardless of the number of times this happens, we do it anyway. Parents naturally love their children that way.
Our One-Mind Parenting Resolve
But as I always had one mind with my husband on child-rearing from day 1 (zero technically because our resolve on parenting has always been the same way before our son was born), our heart is towards applying this principle. Not because we are being rigid, but we choose to love our son better, at least from the standard that God has set in our hearts. It may not work the same way for other families because we do not proclaim this as absolute. Since this teaching is congruent with biblical principles, they make sense to us to apply this to our family.
What more can I say? We are thrilled to have come across FPU and even more thrilled that we can incorporate this in our homeschooling lessons. 🙂
