CASH FOR CHORES

THE MIDLENS

Tim Midlen and wife Emma, both 38, use financial incentives to encourage their children to help out around the house.

Arthur, 11, and nineyear-old Oscar get a base payment of £2 a week, but can boost this to £5 if they carry out all of their allotted chores. Arthur gets a reduced basic allowance of £1 a week in return for having a mobile phone.

To qualify for the bonus, Oscar is tasked with emptying the dishwasher while Arthur has to let the family’s chickens out at least once a day.

Mr Midlen, who manages a musical instrument shop in Oxford, said: “It’s our attempt at making them understand things. They also get to keep birthday and Christmas money, but if there’s something big then they might have to use money to go towards it.

“There’s a big school skiing trip in 2019 that Arthur wants to go on. We would never go skiing as a family so we think it would be a brilliant opportunity for him. But we wanted him to take responsibility for paying for some of it, so we gave him the choice of not going or putting the money from his next birthday and Christmas towards it.”

Mr Midlen said the approach appeared to be working. He said the boys understood money and the fact that if they spent it on one treat then they may have to sacrifice another.

But the brothers still have very different approaches towards spending and saving their money.

“Arthur spends money like water, whereas Oscar saves it,” he said. “He has about £70 in his Rooster account and is saving for a Nintendo Switch. We went to the zoo recently and he was able to spend £35 on some cuddly toys. You could tell Arthur wanted to get something too, but he only had about 50p in his account.”

On Arthur’s mobile phone, Mr Midlen said: “We were a bit wary about the phone as he wanted one from when he was about seven or eight. When he went to secondary school we agreed, but he has to pay for part of it.”