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New Feature: Keep Me Signed In

You may have noticed a new option at the bottom of the FamZoo Sign-in screen. It’s a check box called “Keep me signed in.” If you check this box before clicking on the “Sign In” button, you’ll stay signed in to your FamZoo account when using the current browser. That means you won’t have to enter your user names and password each time you come back. On mobile devices (Android, iPhone, iPod Touch), we now keep you signed in automatically, so you won’t see this option there.

Keep Me Signed In Option

Whenever you’d like to explicitly sign out, just click on the “Sign Out” link beneath your family name in the right-hand side bar of the page.

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Weekly Family Finance Picks (#20)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

This week’s picks: stick figures, allowance with no strings attached, and tips from real moms. Here they are:

Is the Reward System Smart?

Reward Systems

“Ninja” posts a witty and provocative commentary on the use of reward systems with kids. It’s based on his wife’s experiences in the classroom but crosses over to kids at home, allowances, chores, etc.

Don’t miss the comments. There are several thoughtful ones from parents, teachers, and even researchers (like this one).

As an added bonus, Ninja’s stick figure cartoons are pretty darn entertaining. If you like ’em and want to see more, check out his Stick Figure Blog.

Allowance: For Learning or Reward?

by Gail Vaz-Oxlade Guest posting on Get Rich Slowly

Gail, who’s back on our list from last week, also weighs in on the rewards and allowance topic. She shares her definitive opinions on the age old debate of whether or not allowances should be tied to chores. Check out Gail’s defense for why allowances should “come with no strings attached,” and see how readers reacted in the comments.

Ask DSM Readers: How Do Allowances Work in Your Home?

Tara asks her readers to share descriptions of how allowances work in their homes. She gets a number of thoughtful tips and stories from a variety of Moms. See them here.

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Weekly Family Finance Picks (#19)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

Intergenerational relationships, perspectives on teen clothing allowances, and teaching kids about savings are on tap this week:

The Ending of an Era, Can It Be Stopped?

In this short essay, Samantha, a mom of two, reflects on the passing of her grandfather. Thought provoking topics include intergenerational relationships (something I wrote about in a 2006 post), money & values, entitlement, and the impact of technology on the family.

My favorite quote in the post was this one:

The best gift we can give our children is the foundation of life lessons that will make them great people.

Whether you agree or not with Samantha’s take on each point, all of these topics are good food for thought for any parent.

What Does an Allowance Pay For?

Are you thinking of using a clothing allowance as a way to teach your teen about spending within a budget? Then don’t miss this article. Be sure to scan through the comments for lots of great tips and (sometimes divergent) opinions.

By the way, I highly recommend doing this with your teens. It’s been a great learning experience for ours.

Teaching the ABCs of Savings

Gail presents three simple, yet great, points to make with your kids about saving. Excellent advice for parents as well. She tops it off with some helpful tips on matching techniques to motivate your child to get in the saving habit. Read her article here.

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Weekly Family Finance Picks (#18)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous 7 days and post them here.

The allowance vs. commission debate, college savings strategies, and healthy skepticism are the winners this week. Here they are:

Allowance vs. Commission: Which Works Better for your Kids?

Allowance Vs. ChoresDavid and his wife struggled with consistency, accountability, and ownership issues when they rolled out their first allowance system to their two kids, ages 7 and 9. Now they’ve switched over to a “daily commission-able chore list” approach and licked all those problems.

But, have they created new ones? Is the approach sustainable?

Check out David’s system. Be sure to browse through the reader reactions in the comments as well. You might want to weigh in with your own experiences and opinions in this age old debate.

College Savings: the Basics of Saving for College

Sierra lays out the basic best practices for putting together a sensible, achievable college savings plan for your kids. Start early, contribute often, get your debt/savings priorities right, and leverage those 529s.

Check out some good nuggets in the comments too about 529 account funding order for multiple kids

The Big Short Offers Six Great Money Lessons for Kids

Dan distills six money lessons for kids from the book The Big Short. The book is about the failure of our banking system — material that might be too disturbing for children in unfiltered form!

The core message from Dan: teach your kids to maintain a healthy skepticism — especially when it comes to making financial decisions.

Wise advice for young and old.

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Customize Your Accounts and Allowances

Did you know that you can fully customize your Virtual Family Bank setup in FamZoo? Most families just stick with one of the standard configurations stamped out by our Quick Start page. In fact, many families I’ve talked to don’t even realize that you can create any arrangement of accounts and allowances you like.

Our latest HowTo video shows how you can take a standard configuration from our Quick Start, and customize it to your heart’s content. Watch it here:

Video Transcript

You’ve probably gone through our Quick Start bank screen to set up your kid’s accounts and allowances in a pretty standard way.

But now, you want to change something. You want to customize your virtual bank.

Maybe you want to change some names, tweak some settings, allocate allowances differently between accounts, add some new accounts & allowances, or even get rid of some existing ones.

Let’s see how you do that with a simple example.

Let’s assume you started with the popular Spend-Save-Give option from our Quick Start. That’s the one with a single allowance split between three accounts which, by default, are named General Spending, Long Term Savings, and Charitable Giving.

Suppose you want to change this standard “three bucket” approach into your own custom “four bucket” approach where the 4 accounts are: a Pocket Money account for spending on small everyday stuff, a new Big Purchases account where saving happens for occasional “big ticket items” like a bike or a smart phone or a laptop, a College Savings account to help save for future college expenses - perhaps with matching contributions from Mom & Dad, and a Charitable Giving account just like before.

Let’s start by creating the new account for “Big Purchases”.

On the Overview page, look for the CREATE ACCOUNT link in the footer of the Account Balances section.

Click on it, pick the child to own the account, and fill in the fields like name, category, starting balance, and so on.

Click the Create Account button, and you’ll see the new fourth account back in the overview.

Now, let’s change the name of the existing spending account from “General Spending” to the more specific “Pocket Money”.

Click on the GO TO ACCOUNTS link in the footer of the Account Balances overview. That’ll take us to the Accounts listing page under the Bank tab.

Find the General Spending account in the listing, and hover your mouse over it until you see the pencil and trash can icons appear.

Click on the pencil to go to the form for editing the account’s settings.

Type in “Pocket Money” for the new name and click the Save button.

Let’s follow the same steps to change the name of the “Long Term Savings Account” to “College Savings”.

There. We have our four accounts named just the way we want ’em.

Now, we need to update the existing allowance to flow into all four accounts instead of just the original three.

Find the Allowances link in the Viewing section of the left hand side bar. Click on it to go to the Allowance listing page.

Hover over the allowance, and click on the pencil to get to the form for editing its settings.

In addition to the name, the amount formula, and some other settings, we can change how the allowance flows into the various accounts.

Let’s adjust the percentages to make sure a healthy amount will flow into our new Big Purchases savings account.

Click on the Save button, and we’ll see the allowance is now being allocated between all four buckets.

So how ’bout that matching giving for college savings? Let’s do that automatically by creating a new allowance.

Click on the Create link in the left hand side bar. Pick the child, give the allowance an appropriate name, and fill in the other fields so that: the amount matches the 10% that the child is putting in and 100% of the matching allowance flows into the College Savings account.

Click the Create Allowance button, and our custom 4 bucket system with matching college savings is all ready to go.

Oh, and what if you want to delete an account or allowance? Just fly over it in the listing page and click on the trash can. Don’t worry, we’ll always ask you to confirm before we actually delete it.

And that’s how you customize your accounts and allowances in FamZoo.

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Weekly Family Finance Picks (#17)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous 7 days and post them here.

From appreciating the simple things in life to accepting credit cards at your kid’s corner lemonade stand, we’re all over the map this week:

Raising Grateful Kids

I love the concept of being thankful for what you have and instilling that notion in our kids. That's what drew me to Vivian’s post about "On Gratitude" - a new book by Todd Aaron Jensen.

The book contains a collection interviews with 51 celebrities. OK, normally, not my favorite subject matter, but these celeb profiles are different. The interview question? What are you thankful for? Initially skeptical, I read through some of the profiles on the Amazon preview - like Ray Bradbury's - and found them to be quite fascinating.

Lots of kids are drawn to celebrities, so this might be a clever, engaging way to introduce them to the concept of being grateful for the non-material things in life. It might be fun to read the book together.

I'm still searching around for a couple more detailed reviews before I pull the trigger on purchasing the book. There are actually a set of negative ratings on Amazon right now, but they all seem to be associated with some mix-up regarding an incomplete pre-order version of the Kindle download.

Anyway, even if the book falls short (in spite of the excellent snippets I read), I love the concept, and Vivian’s post summarizes some nice suggestions for creating “gratitude opportunities” with your kids.

Debit Cards: Think Before You Swipe

With more parents putting debit and prepaid cards in the hands of their teens, it makes sense for both parent and teen to understand your exposure when it comes to a lost or stolen card. How does it compare with your liability for a lost or stolen credit card? If you’re considering going this route with your teen, you’ll want to read up on some of the details and loopholes outlined in Karen’s article. You might just want to read it (and the comments) for your own edification too.

A Simple Swipe on a Phone, and You’re Paid

Put that Lemonade on my Credit Card, Please!

Imagine your kid setting up a lemonade stand that accepts not only cash, but credit cards too. Sound crazy? It might actually be right around the corner. Check out David’s article and see how.