Double Your Money With Smart Piggy Bank*

Double Your Money With Smart Piggy Bank*

*if guru girl is your mom

(don't you hate the fine print?)

The Dynamic Duo are always looking for ways to make some bank. Turns out all they have to do is lose a tooth or two.

“Parents” magazine just reported the tooth fairy is pretty generous these days. $3.70-per-lost-tooth generous. On average.

No wonder the Dynamic Duo have so much cash squirreled away in their crayon banks!

Teaching kids money management is a tricky thing. It’s something many of us put off because it’s complicated, and we don’t want to do it wrong.

Do you give kids an allowance?

Do you tie the allowance to chores?

Do your kids get free reign in how they spend the allowance?

(Here’s what that question really means: if the 10 year old wants to take $40 she’s saved up and blow it on a bunch of plastic jewelry from Claire’s, do you let her?)

If you opt for an allowance, do you remember to get cash and give it to your kids every week? Or do you forget for awhile and let those little extortionists demand vast sums when the topic comes up?

And lastly, when your kiddo sees something at the store that she wants to buy does she actually have the allowance money with her? Or do you buy it for her and then forget to have her reimburse you when you get home?

Allowance management systems are complicated! But we all want our kids to be responsible about money, right?

In order to be responsible with money, experts say, kids have to have experience handling it. That means my fella and I have to suck it up and do some work on the allowance front.

Luckily, there’s an app for that. Not really an app, but a website. “Smart Piggy Bank” is a website that allows the parent to act as banker. You don’t give the site any financial information. You just set up an account for your kiddo by typing in a name. It can even be a fake name. Like Justin Bieber who recently changed his Twitter handle to Bizzle.

Then you set the amount you want deposited in the account each week and set the interest rate you’ll pay your kiddo for her savings. No real money is actually in the account. It’s just a tracking mechanism.  

Your kid can jump on the computer and pull up her account to check for funds, just like you do with your real bank account. She can record withdrawals and other outside deposits (like birthday gifts from grandparents) too.

Because it’s online it’s easily accessible at, say, Target when the 8 year old wants to buy more silly socks. I’m envisioning pulling out my phone and my kiddo pulling up her account to deduct the sock money right then and there.

The Dynamic Duo are a lot more thoughtful about their purchases when it’s their money so I’m thinking the extra time in the Target aisle will be worth it.

I’m opting for this account versus an online one at our real bank because it lets me set the interest rate for savings.

I’m going to set an astronomically high interest rate.

Because it kills me when the 10 year old spends $40 on plastic jewelry. And I think she’ll be motivated to save more of her money if she calculates that she’ll double the amount by year’s end. (Unless, of course, my idea backfires and the 10 year old then buys $80 of plastic jewelry.)

We’re going to give Smart Piggy Bank a try. (Click this link to go to smartpiggybank.com)It can’t be worse than our last allowance management system, which consisted of plastic baggies filled with money, which I carried around for each kid in my purse.

That system gave the kids no lessons in savings but gave their mother both a back ache and broken purse strap from the weight of all those damn quarters!

At least Smart Piggy Bank will save my posture and the guesswork of “Did I give the allowance last week?”

Happy banking, guru girls & guys!