S'mores, Rewards and Goals in S'moresUp

What are S'mores?

S'mores are points that are earned and redeemed inside the S'moresUp app. S'mores can be considered as a currency within your family. It's like the IOU note that you give to your kids when they complete a task or surprise you with an unexpected good deed. As of now, the only way S'mores is earned is through Chores. When a chore is created, you assign how much S'mores it is worth. When a kid completed the chores, the S'mores associated with it are allocated to the kid. 

You can consider S'mores as a token that can be collected, saved and exchanged for things and favors in return at a later time. It's just like the dollar, just that it is worthless outside the app.

Normally, when I help set up a family on S'moresUp, I ask them to have an arbitrary conversion value for S'mores. While most of the time kids trade in their s'mores for a play date or a movie night, sometimes they trade it in for material things like a toy or a movie ticket. Its always good to have a currency exchange rate associated with it. In my family, I have a conversion rate of 100 S'mores to a dollar. 

If S'mores is like the currency and, the chore is the way to way to earn them, then Rewards and Goals are the ways kids spend them.

The Art of Rewarding

Reward, to me, is a token of appreciation. It's a way for me to say thank you to my daughter. It's also a way for me to understand what she appreciates and what motivates her. Most of the times, the rewards that she wants is a do-it-yourself kit or her favorite food or a movie night. 

Normally, Rewards are small ticket items that kids get to redeem with their S'mores. By small-ticket items, I mean, kids don't have to save a lot to get a reward. S'mores that are earned by doing chores is used to redeem rewards; If your kid is using the Money-Wise (jar functionality), they use the S'mores in the "Spend Jar" to trade in for their rewards.

On S'moresUp, you can create a reward by clicking 'Rewards' from the Family Tab. A reward has 4 main components to it

• The Name of the reward
• The number of S'mores required to claim the reward
• The number of times a reward can be claimed and
• The till how long the reward can be claimed

Kids have a similar view of the Rewards Shelf from which they can click on individual rewards and redeem them. A reward is not associate with a kid and anyone in the family can claim a reward. A notification is sent to the parents when a reward is redeemed.

Kids can also convert their S'mores to Cash through Rewards. Cash-out is a special reward and needs to be configured for it to be visible to kids. It has an explicit option wherein you can specify the conversion rate between S'mores and Dollars. When a kid redeems the 'Cash Out' reward, they are requesting the S'mores to be converted to local currency

 

Goals - A means to Delayed Gratification

If the Reward was a small ticket item and provides instant gratification to kids, Goal teaches kids to save. In simple terms, Goals are bigger rewards, which take a lot of saving to get and teaches things like money management and delayed gratification. My daughter loves Snowboarding, and she is saving towards a trip to Utah during winter to snowboard with her friend who lives in Park City.

In S'moresUp, Goals do not have an expiration time and is assigned to someone. You can create an item to save towards by clicking 'Goals' in Family Tab

Kids view of Rewards & Goals

Rewards and Goals that the kids can claim can be viewed by the kids when the access their profile page. Kids can also track their progress on their goal by clicking the Goals tab

If a reward is available and eligible to be claimed, the 'Claim Reward' button is enabled. Similarly, for Goals, 'Available for Redeem' is displayed on top of the goal if the goal can be redeemed.