How To Set Up A Digital Envelope Budgeting System With Prepaid Cards

The envelope system is a tried and true budgeting approach for families who use cash. Here it is in a nutshell:

1. Label a physical envelope for each household budget category.
2. Allocate cash each pay cycle between the envelopes according to your budgeted amounts.
3. Make payments for a spending category using only the cash remaining in the corresponding envelope.

Nice and simple.

Unfortunately, the cash envelope system is also tedious and impractical in today’s digital world.

Why?

How To Use Your Prepaid Card With PayPal

If your prepaid card has account and routing numbers that support ACH transfers (like FamZoo cards do), you can link it to PayPal just like a typical bank checking account.

Why is that useful? You can:

How to Approve Chore Earnings Before Handing Over The Cash

If you’re like most parents, you’re way too busy to be approving every little chore your kid checks off in real time. That’s why we’ve taken a trust-but-verify (and hold-accountable) approach with our chore checklists.

Your kid can check items off and earn rewards without your intervention. That’s the trust part.

You can get notifications when your kid checks items off — either through checklist alerts or card activity alerts. That’s the verify part. If Junior is a little too quick on the trigger finger, you can un-check an item, and it will reverse the award.

You can also let Junior know there will be repercussions for checking off items inappropriately. Maybe reduced screen time, a deposit to the family swear jar, or a financial timeout. That’s the accountability part.

But what if Junior is also quick on the trigger finger when it comes to spending ill-gotten rewards as soon as they hit the card? We’re talking real money here, and the horse has already left the barn. That’s a problem.

Here’s a nice middle ground solution that maintains convenience for parents while eliminating temptation for kids.

Automate Transfers Between Accounts With This Checklist Trick

Let’s say your daughter wants to move 10 cents from her spending account to her savings account every day.

Or, maybe one sibling needs to pay another back for an intra-family loan and wants to schedule a weekly payment of $2.

You probably know FamZoo supports automated transfers with allowances and auto debits. The problem is, those always involve the parent’s primary funding card. It’s either the source or the destination for the transfer. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the two scenarios above.

So, how do you automate a transfer between two non-primary card accounts in a family?

How To Deliver Allowance And Chore Payments From Multiple Parents

In the FamZoo system, allowance is always delivered to kids from the primary funding card. There can only be one primary funding card in a family.

That poses a challenge for split family situations in which both parents want to provide separate allowance payments.

Here’s a solution that uses Auto Debits to have one parent automatically pay back the other.

One Year Into Using FamZoo: An Honest Review From Regular Parents

I opened up iTunes today to perform my periodic check on FamZoo reviews.

My mind was blown by “ReggaeGeek” — a dad with two kids 12 and 14.

He left the most epic review ever. So epic in fact, that I couldn’t include the whole thing on our kind words page without crowding out the others. So, I’m sharing the full review text here.

Sure, it’s highly complimentary, so you could dismiss this post as a shameless self-promotion. But ReggaeGeek’s review is also comprehensive, instructive, real, and — for us — insanely motivating.

ReggaeGeek’s personal FamZoo story describes precisely the positive outcome we’re striving to facilitate. Reading it motivates us to double down and work harder to replicate his experience in more and more families.

And, no, I have no idea who ReggaeGeek is. That’s what makes his story particularly gratifying.

So, if you want to see how some “regular parents” used FamZoo to transform their kids’ money behaviors in ways that were nothing short of “incredible” (ReggaeGeek’s words, not mine), read on. There are some priceless tips in here that you may want to adopt in your own household.

Without further ado, here’s ReggaeGeek’s review extracted verbatim from iTunes (aside from a little formatting and spellcheck):

30 Money Lessons To Teach Your Teens For Financial Literacy Month

Financial Literacy Month starts tomorrow, April 1. No fooling.

Like last year, we’re sharing tips throughout the month to help you make sure your kid is no money fool.

This year, we’re focusing on teens.

Here are 30 quick money lessons you can teach your teens one day at a time:

Ordering Prepaid Cards For Your Kids

Watch this video to learn everything you need to know about ordering FamZoo prepaid cards for your kids. It’s the perfect way to give your kids safe, hands-on experience managing money. You’ll learn about family registration, subscription plans, additional fees (or lack thereof!), how the cards work, age requirements, online verification, custom card labels, how we securely handle your personal info, shipping, and online activation upon delivery.

34 Family Finance Tips To Try With Your Youngsters, Tweens, and Teens In 2017

Are you looking for fresh ways to help your kids level up their money skills in 2017?

Last year, I gathered over 300 tips and techniques for helping kids learn how to manage money responsibly. That’s a lot to sift through. So, here are 34 of my recent favorites grouped by age level. They’re all new since my round up of 21 back-to-school money tips in August.

Feeling overwhelmed by the new year already? Just pick one or two to try. Or, tackle one a month.