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With my children’s two-week spring break coming to a close this weekend, I decided to treat them to a day at the Sacramento Zoo. With the budget in mind, four of us (hubby had to work) were able to have a lovely day on less than $40, souvenirs included.

How did we do it? Well first, we have a family membership. For the price of what it would cost our family for admission to the zoo three times, we are able to get in for free for an entire year. I think we took advantage of our membership six times this year.

Next expense: Food. We ate lunch before going to the zoo. You can easily drop $40 on lunch at the zoo, so eat before you go. I talk the kids into this by promising a treat at the zoo. This time we all had popsicles to the tune of $2.95 each! It ain’t cheap to eat at the zoo, people!

Have you seen the yellow zoo key boxes around the zoo? The key is around $3.50 and when you insert it into the boxes you learn some interesting facts about the animal you happen to be watching. We bought our key about a year ago and always remember to bring it back with us.

Also, have you seen the cute little animal- shaped sports bottles for the kids? Refills on those are 50 cents. We bought one for each child a year ago, and bring them with us whenever we go to the zoo, so we are not spending $3 per drink. For my family, this saves us $7.50 per trip. Not only that, but we are also reducing our waste by reusing the bottles.

Our total for food was about $17, which included a non-kid drink for me.

Last stop: the gift shop. We could have easily avoided this if it wasn’t in the budget. This time around, though, I gave each child a $5-ish limit. One will spend the whole $5, while another will be way under and the third a little over, but it all evens out. Our total at the gift shop was about $16 after tax. And I had completely forgotten to show my membership card to save an additional 10 percent , too.

If you are keeping score, our total for the day was about $33. Granted, we had initial expenses a year ago that we continue to reap the benefits of. But if you are smart about those things and truly consider your family’s usage of such memberships, you can have some serious cheap entertainment during those months when money’s tight. Don’t forget about science museums and other types of activities, too.

Last tip: save your receipts! The zoo is a nonprofit, so any money you spend there should be a tax writeoff!

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The time finally came. My oldest child — almost 9 years old now — has asked for an allowance.

I’ve been putting off the whole allowance issue for a couple of reasons. My biggest reason is I believe children should not be paid for simply breathing, yet should also be expected to do certain chores as just being part of the family. In other words, we are all a team, and each member is expected to perform certain functions in order to be part of the team (not that we would ever kick a child off our team, but you get the idea).

So what to do? Do you pay your child money for doing the things that are automatically expected of them anyhow? Do we give our children weekly spending money and hope they will learn the value of a dollar at some point? How can we as parents make this whole allowance thing a teachable process?

The solution I have found that is working well in my family is not to give allowances at all, but to give commissions. This concept is based on Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Junior kit and isn’t as complicated as it seems. Here is how we implemented commissions in our household:

1. We sat down with each child and established “jobs” that the child was capable of completing easily. For my son, his jobs include gathering soda cans around the house; clearing the backyard of “puppy presents;” cleaning out the minivan; wiping down the bathroom counter; and taking out the trash. Notice I didn’t include keeping his room clean here. Later for that.
2. Next, we established a daily pay rate for each job. Most of his jobs will earn him 10 cents per day, but the puppy present job earns more, because, well it’s a gross job, no one wants to do it, and it has to be done. So we pay him a whopping $1 each day he cleans the backyard.
3. Finally, according the Financial Peace Junior, there should also be financial penalties, so to speak. So we established that not keeping his room clean, not completing his homework daily and fighting with his sisters were all penalties. He will have to pay us $1 for each penalty. Now, my son is a neat freak, so his room cleaning is not a problem for him, but sometimes he’ll try to slack on his homework and fighting is a daily problem in our house. Since we have instituted this plan, homework is no longer a problem and the peace has been kept, for the most part.

The beauty about commissions is they are only paid when the child completes the work. No work, no money. Just like in real life. So, the child learning the value of money by earning it, the child is still expected to do basic chores that were already expected of him and we are not paying him simply for taking up space in the house.

At my son’s age, this is working great. He is saving his commission, tithing on it and spending a portion of it on things he really wants. My middle child, who is now 6 years old, hasn’t completely grasped things, but she manages to earn about a dollar a week, and she’s proud of it! My youngest, a precocious 4 year old, has decided for now that she doesn’t want to work, and that’s fine too. Someday soon she will.

And when she’s ready, I’ll have some jobs waiting for her.

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