It all started with a note I couldn't find.

“Mom, I want to go to the store. How much money do I have?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question. Two weeks earlier she'd spent an afternoon pulling weeds out front, and I'd paid her in real dollars, fair and square. And there I stood in my own kitchen with absolutely no idea how much money she had.

The answer was on a scrap of paper. Or in a note on my phone. Or in a different note on my phone, which I'd started because I couldn't find the first one. My girls were doing real work, and I was running the family bank like a forgetful teller.

A little context. I have four daughters, all under ten. I'm a full-time mom, a full-time taxi driver, and the full-time family secretary in charge of who goes where, with what, and when. I also run my own business, with my own clients, in whatever hours are left over. Most days I'm pulled in twelve directions before breakfast. A ledger on scraps of paper was never going to survive that.

In our house, chores aren't paid. Chores are how you give back for being part of the family. We all live here, so we all pitch in, and nobody, Mom and Dad included, is the household staff. The older you get, the more you take on, and the more interesting your opportunities become. Earning is different. Earning is for the jobs that go beyond family life, like those weeds. And since one girl always works a little harder than another, the points don't always come out even. Fair is fair.

My husband has always been, and always will be, my big idea guy. He took one look at the mess and said what I'd been thinking: there should be an app for this. So, I decided to build one. It started as a simple way to keep track of points and money. Then it kept growing, because the more I built, the more I saw what it could be.

I saw it most clearly at the register.

That's the feeling I'm after. I don't want to be the parent who assigns the job, names the price and then nags until it's done. I want my girls to be little go-getters.
You want something? Great. Go figure out how to get it.

You get paid for adding value

When I was growing up, every kid in the neighborhood was outside, and I babysat constantly. Work found you, because you were around. Today's kids are growing up in a busier, more indoor world, where a lot of life happens on a screen. The neighborhood doesn't hand out jobs the way it used to.

So Kerdizo is my modern version of that neighborhood, and it's built on one idea: you get paid when you give someone something of value. Sometimes that's a spotless car. Sometimes it's an afternoon making Grandpa laugh and reading him his favorite books. Your time and attention are real value, and kids should know it.

Once that clicks, earning stops being a list of tasks and turns into a creative puzzle. Whatever they grow up to be, an artist, a writer, anything at all, even the paths people warn won't pay, they'll know how to earn. A kid who keeps asking what could I do that someone would value? is never stuck with whatever the job title pays.

Then the money comes in, and the next lesson begins. A little goes to giving, a little goes to saving, and the rest is theirs to spend on something they chose. We suggest 10% to give and 10% to save. Giving shows them that what they earn can help someone else. Saving teaches them to ask the grown-up question early: what's my safety net? Both habits are a lot easier to build at six than at thirty-six.

A black belt and a good target

The most valuable thing my parents ever gave me was a simple idea: hard work, dedication and a good target can take you further than you ever imagined.

They taught it to me through karate. The deal was clear. I could quit any time I wanted, after I earned my black belt. So the black belt became my target, and I went after it.

It took years, and somewhere along the way it stopped being about the belt. I got stronger, physically and in every other way. I learned to keep showing up on the days I didn't feel like it. By the time I tied that belt on, I'd become a very independent, very confident young woman.

(And yes, my girls will be doing martial arts too. It's so good for the body, and so good for the soul.)

That's the heart of Kerdizo. Give a kid a goal worth reaching for, a clear way to get there, and the dignity of earning it themselves. Their goals live right in the app, where they can watch “someday” turn into “almost.” And because earning is a skill, every job counts. The first level comes after ten jobs, and as the levels climb, a little sprout grows into a tree, then a whole grove. Practice makes progress. Nobody can ever take a level back, either. They earned it.

Coming next, if you want it

A lemonade stand is where a lot of us got our start, and it's where my next idea begins. Before you sell a single cup, the lemons, sugar, ice and cups all cost money. So how many cups do you need to sell to cover your costs? What does each one really cost you? Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and a card table on the sidewalk is a fine place to learn it.

I'd love to help kids work that out: turn an idea into a plan, price it, and figure out what it takes to break even. If your family would use that, tell me. It's the next thing I want to build.

Tell me you'd use it

Why “Kerdizo”?

κερδίζω

ker-DEE-zo · to earn, to win

I searched a long time for a name that said more than “earn.” Then I found κερδίζω, a Greek word said ker-DEE-zo. It means to earn, and it also means to win. Greek uses one word for both. (Its root, κέρδος, is the ancient Greek word for gain.)

That's the whole idea. When kids earn their own money, they win more than money: confidence, independence, and the knowledge that they can set a goal and reach it.

The Greeks didn't invent the coin. That honor goes to Lydia, a kingdom just across the water in what's now Turkey, in the late 600s BC. But the Greek cities took to coins almost at once and carried them all over the Mediterranean, and the idea of money you could hold in your hand traveled with them.