Should A Summer Job Signal The End Of Allowance?

I recently received the following thoughtful question from a FamZoo parent (slightly edited to ensure anonymity):

Who Is Struggling With Their Cards?

FamZoo family members often struggle with their cards. Not surprising. Young kids are just learning the financial ropes and discovering the 11 important numbers they need to know. Teenagers inadvertently sign up for subscription services they can’t afford. Elderly family members have senior moments.

Are your family members struggling with their cards? When? Why? Where?

Unless you have activity alerts enabled, you may not know for sure. Even if you do, you may want to collect a handy summary report for a family finance meeting.

Here’s how to capture a quick struggle snapshot across the whole family:

3 Clever Ways To Use Transfer Requests

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”:

30 Family Finance Tips For Financial Literacy Month

• April

  1
  Start a “Family 401(k)”. This is my all-time favorite family finance hack for teens with W-2 income from a summer or part-time job. It combines a Roth IRA with annual family matching. The arrangement encourages getting a job, forces a long-term investing mindset, and can be truly life changing decades later thanks to the magical power of compounding.
  👉 More info
• April

  2

  Use AI to decipher unexpected charges. As your kids learn the financial ropes with their first debit cards, the chances are near 100% that you’re going to stumble across charges you don’t recognize. When you do, try consulting an AI model from a trusted provider to track them down. The models are getting better and better at decoding cryptic charges and suggesting how to handle them.

  👉 More info

Use AI to Clarify What Kids Buy

AI models are getting better and better at decoding the cryptic charges on your kid’s card.

If you receive a card activity alert or see an entry in a card’s transaction history with a description you don’t recognize, try consulting an AI model from a trusted provider to track it down.

🔒 If you suspect fraud, be sure to lock the card while you investigate.

Case in point: A FamZoo parent recently asked me if I had any insight into this obscure purchase description: “8006837392 USA”.

I turned to ChatGPT for help using the following simple prompt: