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The Earn Your First $50 Kid Money Challenge (With Free Printable)

By: Author Amanda L. Grossman

Posted on Last updated:

Get money into your child’s hands and help them learn some valuable money lessons with the Earn Your First $50 Challenge.

The #1 thing I hear parents say they want their child to learn to do with money:

boy counting coins on desk, text overlay "earn your first $50 challenge for kids"

Learn how to save it.

But here’s the thing: you can’t save what you don’t have.

A child who has no money to begin with (or who has an inconsistent money source, like through a duct-taped Kid Money System or when their birthday rolls around) will not be able to learn how to save it.

It’s like putting the horse before the cart.

Maybe you're not ready to get consistent money into your child's hands (whether through an allowance or chore commissions).

So, let’s do the next best thing: help your child earn some money for them to start managing.

How to Do the Earn Your First $50 Challenge

Download this free set of Kid Money Trackers, and have your child pick one out. Print it, and follow the steps below to get started.

Step #1: Brain Dump a List of Money-Earning Ideas

Help your child brain dump all their ideas – the good ones, the pie-in-the-sky ones, the meh ones – about how they can earn extra money for this challenge.

Here are the main ways a child can earn money:

  • Allowance/Chore Commissions
  • At-Home Chore Projects
  • Neighborhood/Neighbor Chore Projects
  • Creating and Selling Something
  • Getting a job
  • Money Earning its Own Money (Savings account interest rate/investing gains)

And within each of these categories, are tons of ideas.

For example, for the Allowance/Chore Commission category: your child could try to negotiate a pay raise from you for their allowance (hey, all ideas are okay during the Brain Dump session!). Or, they could ask to do Chore Projects around the house to earn extra money above regular responsibilities.

Here are some resources to help your child fill in their Brain Dump:

Step #2: Filter the Ideas Down to the Quickest & Best

If your child is anything like mine, then they either come up with 47 different ideas OR, none at all.

Hopefully, that resource list of kid-earning ideas helps with the latter problem.

But if it’s the first problem? Then you need to help them filter down their ideas to the best ones to go after.

To earn their first $50 challenge, we want to encourage them to choose the ideas that will: take the shortest amount of time and are the easiest to take action on.

That matrix looks something like this:

matrix with easy and hard on the "y" axis, and "I'm excited to try it"/"I'm not excited to try it" on the "x" axis

Step #3: Do It

Take one of their ideas, and do it. Earn that cash.

Step #4: Track it

Use the free printable challenge tracker to color in one lightning bolt for each $1 earned. When each $10 is earned (one line), they can color in one of the circles.

All the way to $50.

Step #5: Do Something Else to Earn More

Keep going back to that list of filtered ideas for how to earn extra cash, and try them out.

OR, if they found something that’s lucrative and they like? Keep doing that.

Until they reach $50.

See? Simple. But the money lessons your child is about to learn from taking on this challenge? WOW. They might just knock you off your feet.

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Amanda L. Grossman

Chief Creator at Money Prodigy
Amanda L. Grossman is a writer and Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI®), a 2017 Plutus Foundation Grant Recipient, and founder of Money Prodigy. Her money work has been featured on Experian, GoBankingRates, PT Money, CA.gov, Rockstar Finance, the Houston Chronicle, and Colonial Life. Amanda is the founder and CEO of Frugal Confessions, LLC. Read more here or on LinkedIn.