Who holds the purse strings in a FamZoo family?
Short answer: parents (with lots of lobbying from the kids).
When it comes to money oversight, family members in the parent role are “all powerful”. They can see all of the cards in the family, manage all of the automated money movement rules, and transfer funds instantly between any of the cards.
On the other hand, family members in the child role have restricted powers. They can only see their own cards and can’t move money between cards without parental approval.
Children can seek money movement approval by launching a money transfer request. Here’s how a typical exchange works between a family member in the child role, “Junior”, and a family member in the parent role, “Mom”:
- Junior signs into FamZoo and selects the Request Transfer action.
- Junior fills out a form to describe the details of the plea: the approving parent (Mom), the From account, the To account, the desired amount, a description, and an optional memo for additional justification, commentary, pleading, flattery, etc.
- Upon Junior’s submittal of the form, Mom receives a notification with a link to Junior’s request.
- Mom selects the link to review the request details and render judgement.
- Mom can approve, partially approve, or deny the request. Mom can optionally include a comment or rebuke for posterity.
- Upon Mom’s submission of the review form, the approved amount (if any) moves between the cards.
- At any time, Mom and Junior can each review a running history of pending and completed requests on the Money Requests screen.
- If, in a rare moment of self reflection, Junior recognizes a pending transfer to be misguided, he can rescind it by selecting the Delete button in the Money Requests screen. Unlikely, but a mom can dream...
With the above flow in mind, here are three classic transfer request scenarios we see in FamZoo families:
- Slower, Smarter, Safer Spending — Little Johnny tends to spend too much money on in-game purchases. Grandma gets a little confused in the evenings and overspends at sketchy websites.
The solution? A little friction in the spending process.
- Set your dependent family member up in the child role with two cards: a spending card and a non-spending card.
- Retain possession of the non-spending card.
- Maintain a low balance on the spending card while holding the bulk of the dependent’s funds on the non-spending card.
- Have your dependent issue a transfer request whenever they need additional spending funds to complete a purchase.
The end result: no hair-trigger purchases, more thoughtful conversations about spending, less fraud.
- Sibling Payback — Suzy bought pizza for herself and her little brother, Johnny. Johnny owes Suzy for his share. Biff bet Buffy $5 that he could jam 20 grapes in his mouth. Buffy owes Biff $5.
How can the siblings pay each other back?
If mom enables the Allow Transfers Between Family Members setting, one sibling can choose another sibling’s account as a destination for a transfer request. Mom remains the referee in the transaction and can approve it if everything looks legit, or deny it if she wants to discourage idiotic family bets.
👉 To change the Allow Transfers Between Family Members setting, see here.
- Controlled Outside Contributions — Uncle Joe wants to kick in spending funds for Suzy while she’s away at college. Your ex wants to cover some of Johnny’s spending over the summer. Grandma wants to shower the grandkids with absurd amounts of shopping funds on a random basis.
How do you enable the flow of funds from extended family members while retaining full control over the internal family purse strings?
- Order a card for your extended family member putting them in the child role.
- Let them load their card independently using any of our reload options.
- Enable the Allow Transfers Between Family Members setting.
- Have the extended family member initiate transfer requests as desired. Note that the recipient can initiate the transfer request, too: “Uncle Joe, I ‘need’ some extra funds for Spring Break! Love, Suzy.”
You’ll be able to moderate the flow of funds and curtail any amounts that are over the top.
Spring Break request? “Nope. Love, Mom.” Declined.
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