Savings & Investment, Smart Spending

Websites that Track Your Child’s Allowance

In recent years, a number of websites have popped across the web, which allows parents to track their child’s allowance, spending and savings. The sites provide tools parents can use to teach their children good money management techniques. Many sites enable parents to add more sophisticated features to the accounts as the child grows older and the allowance increases.

Many experts agree that giving kids an allowance offers a great way to foster financial responsibility and learn budgeting concepts and the need to tailor their weekly or monthly purchases to their available funds. If a child spends all the money on the first day, they must deal with the consequences of waiting until they receive more money the next week or month.

Parents can still provide basic necessities for their children, such as food, clothing, shoes, books, and other supplies. Kids can take on the responsibility of paying for their extras, which may include candy, games, fashion items and other nonessential purchases.

Learning financial accountability at an early age encourage children to become more discerning and how they spend their money and to think about purchases before spending the cash.

Here are several websites that can assist parents in helping their kids become financially literate:

Count My Beanz

Count My Beanz  is a free membership site that teaches children from ages 3 to 8 how to earn, save and donate money.  Parents can open an account for each child, which includes 1 Beanz Spending and 1 Beanz Savings Account. .  Members receive “Beanz” that the parents redeem in the form of a gift card, which the site mails to the child. The gift cards support the site’s operations.

Kids can donate, which results in a quarterly cash donation made from Count My Beanz on behalf of the child to K.I.D.S.

First Kids Banks

First Kids Banks  offers the concept of a virtual bank for kids and also tracks household chores assigned to children.  The bank allows parents to make deposits to their accounts from a PC or cellular phone. It eliminates the need to dole out cash and provide kids with the tools they need to develop their financial skills and manage their own money.

As the child grows older, parents can add a savings account, which pays interest, and a charity account. In addition, First Kids Banks has a feature that allows children to borrow money for which they pay finance charges.

Kids Allowance Bank

This website helps parents teach their children the rudiments of personal finances by helping kids track and monitor their allowances. Kids Allowance Bank, also give teachers and childcare professionals access to the website, which they can use as a teaching tool in a classroom or childcare setting and track an entire group.

Tykoon

The Tykoon website divides financial literacy into four components: Earn, Save, Give and Spend. The site focuses on providing children real life experience focused around real money. Parents can choose to give their kids a daily, weekly or monthly stipend. The parent can select an automated setting, which distributes the earnings in savings, giving and spending “buckets.” A parent must approve any dispersal from the child’s account.

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