Average households outsource plant watering? You aren't even being honest with yourself.
Not 'plant watering', but 'lawn maintenance'. Plus we were growing some herbs that needed some minilmal maintenance. At 9, she can water flowers (garden), at 15 she can mow lawns. Other jobs she had were giving me a haircut, getting some PDF files organized with a table of contents for me (I didn't want to spend 2-3h doing that, and it taught her some skills), car washing, housecleaning in my room (that's my job that I'm outsourcing to her), but nor elsewhere in the apartment (that's a chore that she needs to contribute toward), maintaining bicycles in top condition (tires etc.), personal shopping (I give her a box of what I need more of and have her google for the cheapest price+shipping, that's a very low hourly rate), washing the fridge (big job that I was quoted and paid $10 for 10 years ago), mending my clothes, but not hers, and a couple of hours of mother's helping here and there. I paid my 5 year old a few bucks to sort and organize $150 worth of LEGO DUPLOs for sale. Some of the little stuff I pay to Roth IRA, because it was money earned (because some houses pay kids for chores), but I don't match (because our house does not pay kids for chores). Generally, I try to pay for stuff that I'm responsible for, and not pay for stuff they are responsible for. This will obviously change with time.
I'm actually really struggling to come up with things that kids could be doing that they should also be paid for. I am absolutely not paying for taking out garbage, etc., so I sit and think and think "what could be a job she could do?" Doing haircuts is a good one, but I only need it a couple of times a year. Also, everybody else I know outsources housekeeping, so that would be a good one, except that the reason we don't do it is that we believe people should be responsible for their own space. So I can only pay her for keeping up the space that she doesn't use, which is my room. It gets really contorted if you try to do it right and keep it logical and consistent, but the good news is that the IRS does not care about the small change. This whole exercise was about teaching the value of work, rather than saving for retirement.
Future plans involve teaching dad to swim (she was on a swim team, and dad is a poor swimmer), and that would be serious bucks (likely $10-15 per hour or per lesson). She also wants to get into jewelry making on Etsy/eBay, which might be harder than she thinks, but we will support the effort. Another thing she could do is prep and list and package stuff for sale on eBay, for a cut. We have tons of crap that should be sold, but we have no time for that.
If somebody has more ideas on what kids could be paid for, I'm all ears. I've spent good time googling 'jobs for kids' or such a couple of years ago, but that wasn't very useful.
