Online Allowance/Chore Bake-Off, Kelly's Allowance Heroes, GenY Joneses: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#49)

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. We’re up to 1,573 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

What’s the common thread in this week’s picks? Comparisons. Suzanne compares online allowance and chore tracking sites. Kelly compares allowance methods. And, Zac reminds us not to compare ourselves to the Joneses. Here we go:

Review: FamZoo — Flexible Enough For Every Family

by Suzanne Parker on Growing Rich Kids

OK, let’s get the shameless self-promotion pick out of the way...

Are you curious to know who provides the leading online allowance and chore management sites? Curious to know how they stack up against one another? Suzanne was. She took the time to throroughly test drive and review 5 of them in depth — Zefty, MoneyTrail, ThreeJars, FamilyMint, and FamZoo. She selected a winner based on the criteria most important to her family. Of course, we were delighted to see that FamZoo came out on top in this (first of its kind as far as I know) side-by-side comparison. Read the full review here.

Money Smart Kids: Allowance

by Kelly Kinkaid on Partially Motivated

Are you wrestling with the most effective way to approach allowance and chores with your kids? Maybe Kelly can help. She’s tried three different approaches so far. She describes her experiences with each here and wraps up with 5 excellent pieces of practical, concise advice. My favorite message: kids are different and kids evolve, so you’re going to need to tweak your system accordingly. No matter how different they are though, all kids need practice managing their own money.

Money Lessons for Every High-School Graduate

by Zac Bissonnette on The Wall Street Journal

Hey, teens: avoid debt and materialism. Don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses whether they’re next door or on television. Zac dishes out some excellent personal finance advice for teens and grown-ups alike. It’s particularly credible coming from a Generation Y college student who is the author of the book Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education without Loans, Scholarships or Mooching off My Parents.

Read Zac’s sound advice here.