At 4:15PM Pacific on Thursday October 29, we flipped the switch on FamZoo.com to start shipping cards with EMV chips that also fully support Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. Hooray! 🙂
Currently, the chip cards are only going out to new families who have registered after that cutover time. I know that’s disappointing to those of you who are existing FamZoo families with the original magnetic stripe cards.
Not to worry though. We’ll have you covered very soon!
All of our existing families on magnetic stripe cards will be upgraded at no charge over the next month or two. It turns out the auto-upgrade is a big effort, and we’re still testing a critical piece of technology from our card processor to clone your existing cards.
When the upgrade technology is ready, parents will see a new sequence of screens in the FamZoo app(lication) where they can:
“Which business best addresses a consumer personal finance or investing problem?”
That was the question posed to 900+ FinCon15 attendees via a mobile polling app. The outcome would determine the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the annual FinTech Startup Competition.
The people spoke: FamZoo. Woot!
I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to earn the respect of the FinCon community for our efforts to improve the financial capability of kids and teens — and, surreptitiously, parents too! Here’s an audience who lives and breathes the personal finance challenges that everyday people face. Their opinion is a tremendous validation of the FamZoo mission and efforts to date.
But what about the formal competition judges? James Ray of Chase Merchant Services, Rachel Schneider of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, Dan Roselli of Packard Place, and J. Money of Budgets Are Sexy. What did they think?
They mulled over the following formal judging criteria:
Has the summary/presentation clearly articulated the value proposition?
Has the summary/presentation demonstrated market opportunity?
Has the summary/presentation demonstrated a sustainable business model that will make money, or, in the case of a venture with a social purpose, make money and have the desired social impact?
Has the summary/presentation demonstrated competitive differentiation/intellectual capital?
How effective was the overall presentation?
Would you invest or back this opportunity?
The judging panel spoke too: FamZoo. And TickerTags. A tie for first.
A tremendous honor, and a nice check to boot!
But what about you? What do you think?
Here’s an informal Periscope broadcast where I walk through an extended version of the demo.
The FinCon people have spoken. The judges have spoken. What say you?
P.S. Several folks have asked us how we plan to use the money. We always coach families to split income between important buckets like spending, saving, investing, and giving. That’s sound advice for families and companies alike, so we’re taking it ourselves. Here’s the game plan:
50% to spending: We have some immediate needs to address in our iPhone app, so we’re going to spend $3,000 on a dedicated iPhone development resource right away.
16.6% to saving: You never know when that next unanticipated expense is going to pounce! $1,000 is going in our “Emergency Fund” for the next thing to hit the fan.
16.6% to investing: Smart investing often entails having “dry powder” available to jump on an opportunity. We’re parking $1,000 to deploy on the next serendipitous growth partnership that comes our way.
16.6% to giving: FamZoo’s “secret ulterior motive” is to jumpstart the lifelong habit of philanthropy, and we like to walk the talk in this department too. We favor charitable missions that are tightly aligned with our own. That’s why we’re donating $1,000 to the fledgling Plutus Foundation to help bring financial capability to those who need it most.
As you may be aware, major websites and internet security experts made news this week by announcing a security flaw in a commonly used piece of internet security software called OpenSSL. You can get more details here:
OpenSSL is used by banks, merchants, and other service providers, including FamZoo, to encrypt information as it passes back and forth between your browser and a website. This week it was announced that the "Heartbleed" flaw was inadvertently introduced into OpenSSL in May of 2012.
The providers that handle our hosting, payment, and card processing services have taken steps to address the flaw on all of their servers. We continue to track the industry response to the situation and will keep our FamZoo families posted on any additional steps that we take.
What should you do? OpenSSL is used in roughly two-thirds of the websites on the Internet. Security experts recommend that you change your passwords periodically even under normal conditions; now is probably a good time to start that good practice! Here's the FamZoo FAQ entry on changing FamZoo passwords:
If you stumble upon your youngster or teen doing something financially savvy in the next week or so, then pull out your phone, and snap a quick picture.
Why?
That photo could pump $200 into your family economy!
Just submit it to the FamZoo Good Money Habits Photo Contest by Monday, January 27, 2014 at 11:59 AM PST. Our panel of judges will award one grand prize of $200 for the best photo as well as three runner-up prizes worth $50 each. The prize money will be delivered either as a credit to the winner’s FamZoo prepaid card or as a separate standalone gift card.
What kind of habits are we talking about? The same ones that FamZoo helps parents teach, like:
earning diligently,
saving patiently,
spending wisely,
giving thoughtfully, or
any other money habit that your family values.
So, how do you enter? Here are the highlights (but read the official contest rules before sending us your entry):
Last week, we unveiled our new family pack of prepaid cards at FinovateSpring 2013, the demo-focused conference for innovative financial and banking technology. We were honored and delighted to be voted by the audience as one of 5 Best of Show recipients out of 72 presenting companies.
Woot!
In case you didn’t get a chance to catch our demo, or you just want to examine it more closely (because you were busy sending snarky tweets, or you tuned out as soon as you saw the Biebs, or you just plain nodded off), I’m posting a rough transcript below. I say “rough” because I don’t memorize my scripts word-for-word for two reasons: 1) I’m completely incapable of doing so, and 2) it tends to kill the mood.
Note: The videos of the presentations have now been posted by Finovate, and ours is here:
Compare with the script below to see where I ended up winging it.
[Screens come on with Bill watching the following video starting at the 0:40 mark for 13 seconds until pausing at 0:53 mark.]
[Looks up at audience sheepishly.]
Oh, hey. I was just checking out the Biebs. Catchy lyrics, huh?
I got money in my hands that I’d really like to blow
Swag, swag, swag,
on you.
OK, I’m not even totally sure I know what that means, but as a father of 5 (4 teens so far), I think I have a pretty good inkling. Did you know that almost 250 million kids have watched that video? Amazing, if not scary.
But I’m not here to talk about teen pop stars today.
I’m here to talk to you about teaching kids good money habits.
How do parents do that?
Well, I think part of it is having a solid financial role model.
Someone who reinforces good, responsible money behaviors, like moderation and delayed gratification.
I think another part is lots of hands-on practice. That’s key to mastering any skill.
So, what if we could roll those two things together into a custom, educational banking experience designed specifically for kids?
A place where our kids could repeatedly practice handling real money while immersed in the positive imagery of a responsible role model.
It would be like financial training wheels for adult banking.
Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Well that’s exactly what FamZoo lets me do. I can set up a custom, private, virtual banking system for my kids.
For example. check out what I’ve set up for my teenage son, Payton, in FamZoo.
[Expands browser window to reveal the following account screen.]
Here I am signed into my very own private virtual family bank —
the “Dwight Family Bank”.
You can see all our family members over here in the sidebar.
I’m signed in as me, the dad, so I can see all my kids’ accounts as well as my own.
When kids sign in, they just see their own accounts.
By the way, notice this lower sidebar area, the upper banners, and the branding. That can all be customized by a specific partner — like a bank or a credit union — using our Partner Edition offering.
More importantly, individual families can customize the experience for their kids based on their own unique values.
So, I’ve created a spending account for Payton, and called it “Spend like a pop star”.
We’re looking at the online view of that account’s transaction history right here.
FamZoo lets me customize the account description for my son, so I’ve done that and have embedded a cool video featuring our esteemed teen pop star money mentor.
I even gave my son a prepaid card featuring that very same financial role model.
That way, whenever he’s is thinking about money, he’ll be encouraged to emulate the behaviors of a teen pop star.
Let’s look at some of his transactions to see how it’s going so far.
I figure kids love their independence, so I let him loose with his card and a $1,000 a week allowance for babes, bling, or whatever. I just get out of the way. Kids can’t stand it when parents interfere in their lives — they just want to be left alone with their peers. Is that so wrong?
You can see the strategy is really paying off. Everything here looks good, except for perhaps this purchase of an LA Kings tattoo — just like the Biebs has. That’s really disturbing because I’m a big, big Sharks hockey fan...
[Pauses. Walks out to side of podium.]
OK, before you go sending any snarky tweets, let me just say that this is obviously absurd. I mean, no parent wants their kid emulating a teen pop star when interacting with money. Right?
So, of course, I’m only kidding here. Well, mostly kidding...
I did actually mean what I said about:
having a good money mentor,
getting lots of hands on practice,
having a banking experience designed specifically for kids,
and using prepaid cards as a stepping stone to checking accounts and credit cards.
I just wouldn’t structure it this way.
So, let me show you the custom banking experience that I really set up for my son, and that we’ve been using together for the last 6 months.
[Switches over to Son’s Prepaid Card account shown below.]
One of the first things you’ll notice: this isn’t an isolated teen prepaid card. We’ve built something really cool and unique using the API to TransCard’s prepaid card platform. Payton’s card is part of a group — or a family pack — of prepaid cards that we use together. You can see my card on the left here. I load my card up periodically from an outside source through a bank transfer, or a MoneyPack, or, if I want to load it for free, I can use Dwolla.
Then I use my card as the funding source for a whole bunch of micro-transfers to my son — payments for allowance, chores, reimbursements, etc. And, sometimes, money even flows in the other direction from my son’s card to my card — for penalties or bill payments when he picks up his share of expenses like his cell phone data plan. The great thing is that all of those micro-payments back and forth are card-to-card transfers within TransCard’s platform. That means they’re all immediate and free.
Before we walk through some recent transactions on my son’s card, let’s step back and look at his financial big picture by clicking on the “diagram” link in the left sidebar.
[Switches to account diagram for son.]
Now you can see how we’ve really set things up in our virtual family bank for Payton. He gets a modest allowance (not $1,000 per week!), and
80% of it feeds into his spending card. The remaining 20% is split between long term saving and charitable giving.
You can see the balance on his card has been trending up.
Perhaps because of the 0.2% compound interest I’m paying him each week as a reward for NOT spending. Remember, that interest is defined and paid by me through an automatic card-to-card transfer which is immediate and free of fees.
You can also see that he’s saving for a MacBook Pro as well, so that helps put a damper on the miscellaneous spending too.
As for money coming out, he’s got some regular automatic monthly bills to pay his parents for the iPhone data plan and the phone insurance. These are also free and immediate card-to-card transfers, but in the opposite direction. So, he needs to plan ahead to make sure he’s got the balance to cover those expenses at the end of each month.
Now, let’s go back and take a look at Payton’s transactions to see how this has all been playing out recently. I’m going to highlight 9 transactions.
[Focuses attention on first transaction.]
I recently shot him a $5 bonus with a text message from my cell phone for memorizing all the U.S. President’s names — an extra credit exercise for his History class. I was very impressed by that, since I can barely remember the names of my 5 kids.
[Focuses attention on second transaction.]
Next, you can see that his allowance was automatically delivered by FamZoo, with 80% of the total going to this spending card. That’s an automatic transfer from my funding card that happens each week.
[Focuses attention on third transaction.]
Then you can see a typical teen purchase for some McDonald’s fast food. Since the FamZoo cards are MasterCard® prepaid debit cards, they’re accepted pretty much everywhere — both online and in stores. That’s really crucial when it comes to accommodating typical teen spending destinations.
Notice that I can drill down on the detail by clicking on the little “settled” icon to check out what time the purchase was authorized. Good. Not during class hours!
[Focuses attention on fourth transaction.]
Next, you can see the automatically delivered weekly interest payment that I’m paying my son to encourage him to maintain a healthy balance on his card and generally spend less. It’s a parent defined savings reward.
[Focuses attention on fifth transaction.]
Here’s a really common scenario: I’m reimbursing Payton for a couple items he bought for a school project. You can see the two purchases just below. OK, at least, he said that iTunes purchase was related to his English presentation. At minimum, it was a creative story, so I’m rolling with it. To reimburse him, I just click on the credit link to enter the transaction description and amount. Behind the scenes, the amount is transferred immediately from my card to his.
[Focuses attention on sixth transaction.]
Here are the automatic debits for the “child bill pay” that we discussed earlier — one for Payton’s monthly share of the iPhone data plan and another for the monthly installment of his cell phone insurance. He needs to plan ahead a bit to make sure he has enough on his card to cover these payments to me at the end of each month.
[Focuses attention on seventh transaction.]
This next transaction highlights our integrated chore chart capability. You can set up a checklist that automatically credits one or more accounts whenever an item is checked off. Or, if you prefer, you can set up a “Chore Fail” chart like we do in our family to ding your kids when they blow off their chores. You can see Payton got dinged a buck here for not making his bed. Here’s a peek at our checklist:
[Navigates to associated chore checklist.]
You can group a set of single and/or repeating items onto a checklist, and each item can optionally have associated rewards and/or penalties.
[Navigates back to transactions. Scrolls back in time to page 2. Focuses attention on eighth transaction.]
Here’s something cool. Each of the cards has an associated account and routing number pair, so you can set up direct deposit right to a family pack card. This can be really handy. For example, I wanted my son to learn how to do his taxes online with TurboTax. This isn’t your most compelling teen activity! But, when I told him he could get a nice refund for his summer job and have it delivered directly to his card, he quickly changed his tune!
[Focuses attention on ninth transaction.]
And, finally, I saved the coolest transaction for last. My son registered for his AP exam online with his card, and I needed to reimburse him for the $110.00 fee. Unfortunately, when I tried to do so, I was short of funds on my card by $89.18. Uh oh. Look, I missed a subsequent automatic interest payment as well.
No worries! FamZoo detects whenever I run short of funds on payments to my kids and automatically creates and tracks the appropriate IOU amounts. As soon as I get around to reloading my card again, FamZoo automatically repays any IOUs that I have outstanding to my kids, like it did here after I reloaded my funding card with a transfer from Wells Fargo.
You can see what it looks like over on my prepaid card. I can jump to the related transaction on my card by clicking on this little card icon.
[Jumps to related transaction on funding card.]
Here, you can see the load from Wells Fargo followed immediately by the automatic IOU repayment to my son.
The bottom line: you don’t have to be the perfect financial role model to use FamZoo effectively with your kids.
You just have to care a little bit more about your own kids’ money habits than your typical teen pop star does. We’ll help you with the rest.
So that’s what our new offering is all about: a customizable family banking experience built on a group of prepaid card accounts that parents use together with their kids to teach good money habits in a way that’s consistent with their unique family values.
All for one low monthly fee that covers every card in the family.
Multiple cards. One fee. Good money habits. Together.
If you’re a parent, swing by the booth and find out how to get in on our sweet promotional offer for the first 1,000 prepaid card family packs.
If you’re a potential partner, come by and let’s talk about how you can offer virtual family banking as a new product to your own customers. I can show you what I didn’t have time to show here: how easy it is to customize the branding and how to place targeted offers inside the app.
Otherwise, just drop by and grab some FamZoo cartoon stickers.
They’re always a hit with any age, and they’re a lot easier to remove than an LA Kings tattoo.
Are you a satisfied FamZoo family or partner? Are we delivering on our mission to help parents teach kids good money habits? Do you have a LinkedIn account? If so, we’d be delighted to receive your endorsement.
Click on the Recommend link under the FamZoo product you’d like to endorse.
Fill in a comment with a brief description of how FamZoo’s product has helped your family or your company. Short, sweet, and honest comments are great. Endorsements with no comments look pretty lame.
Click the Follow button if you’d like to get our updates within LinkedIn.
Last Friday, our soon-to-be-released prepaid card family pack capability received some truly wonderful coverage by TIME’s Dan Kadlec. Dan was kind enough to spend quite a bit of time with me walking through a very detailed online demo of the pre-release family packs that we’re currently testing internally with FamZoo and TransCard families. Check out his write-up here: How to Master the Allowance Question and Prepaid Cards in One Shot.
UPDATE: FamZoo prepaid cards are now shipping. Find out how to order your family pack here.
Naturally, when presented with a radical departure from current practices in the teen prepaid card industry, many people are skeptical. Count one “Tenacious Jim” among the skeptics. Jim left the following comment on the article:
Funny Famzoo shows no link to the terms and conditions. Sometimes those don’t show up till the sign up page but there is nothing there either.
That is usually a sign that something isn’t right. They are hiding something or a link to the accounts terms and conditions would appear somewhere.
They are not a bank. Are funds FDIC insured by a Bank? What are the associated fees for ATM usage, for transactions etc. None of this is mentioned. The list of partners shows no bank listed.
Dan mentions that the card can be loaded by a Bank account for $3 or so (he apparently cannot remember an exact number) and says that is the last fee you’ll see. However what happens the next time you load money? Ooops, there is that $3 fee popping up again. Dan forgets to mention that ACH transfers between banks (again what bank is behind FamZoo?) take 2-3 business days so when junior needs the latest game that night he has to wait for 2-3 days. A transfer between accounts at Bank America would be instant.
Jim raises some good, pointed questions. Here’s my response:
Jim, skepticism is good a good thing, so I respect your concerns, and let me do my best to address them. First, we’re still testing the product prior to its launch in the next 1 to 2 months, so that’s why we do not list the issuing community bank and the cardholder terms on our site yet — nor do we have a link to order the family packs just yet. What we do have is the ability to reserve a spot for one of the first 1,000 family packs which will be offered to subscribing members of FamZoo at no additional charge to what our subscribers are paying today for our current Virtual Family Bank offering. Our current pricing starts at $5.99/month if you pay recurring monthly, or you can pay in advance for up to 2 years for just $60. Family Packs will be available at FamZoo.com (we’ll be working with a specific issuing bank which we’ll announce when the family packs are available), and they will also be available in co-branded form through a variety of community banks.
As for fees, the goal is to subsume as many fees as possible into a single predictable monthly fee and eliminate random usage fees. The one area that is tricky is loading the “funding card” from external sources. We can’t control what some banks will charge. E.g., Wells charges me $3 to transfer to my funding card (3-5 days), but I can do it for free via Dwolla (but it takes longer). We’re expecting that our partner community banks will offer that service for free when transferring from one of their bank accounts. That said, our whole design goal is to make those external loads very infrequent. On the other hand, the very frequent transfers between parent and child cards within a family pack for allowance, chores, parent-paid interest, penalties, etc are all completely free and immediate. That’s because they are card-to-card transfers within our control. As long as you keep your funding card reasonably well stocked, you can shoot the money to junior’s card to buy his “latest game” immediately — but I recommend you make him save up his earnings for it first!
As I said, Jim raises excellent questions, and we hope you won’t hesitate to contact us with more. Just comment below or hit the Contact Us link on our site if you’d prefer to communicate with us privately.
I stumbled across a neat service this weekend that allows you to present your combined social media stream — Facebook, Twitter, your Blog, etc. — in an appealing visual way. It’s like a running gallery of attractive sound bites. The service is called RebelMouse.
You can see the FamZoo social media stream on this page. If you’re visiting this post in your web browser, your should be able to see our stream embedded below as well.
Many financial institutions consider it a core principle to improve the quality of life for their members and the surrounding community. Those efforts often revolve around member education, and naturally, the educational focus for financial institutions tends to be on financial literacy. With all of the challenges in the global economy, that focus is increasingly relevant and urgent. Ben Bernanke, US Federal Reserve Chairman, reinforces the connection when he says:
Financial education supports not only individual well-being, but also the economic health of our nation.1
James Rajotte, Chair of the Canadian House of Commons Finance Committee, echoes the same sentiment:
I firmly believe that one of the key pillars of a strong Canadian economy is having a financially literate population.2
So the “why?” is pretty clear, as is the “when?” — that would be yesterday!
As for the “who?”, I’ve never heard anyone take issue with the old adage: “start early!” So youngsters are clearly a key part of the “who?”. And when money and kids are involved — regardless of what you’re doing in the schools to teach money concepts — you’ll need to involve the parents and guardians. Why? It’s about practice. Like any other skill, kids can’t master personal finance without practice. And, kids can’t practice personal finance without real money. Where do young kids primarily get their money? Their parents, of course. So, the parents need to be involved to make it all work. Even if we were to ignore such practical matters for the moment, it’s very clear that money and values are intimately intertwined. Just ask parents whether they care about how their kids earn, spend, save, and give their money. You’ll invariably hear passionate responses deeply rooted in their unique family history and values. Parental involvement in financial education is a moral imperative.
That brings us to the “how?”. How does a financial institution figure out what’s next and what’s best when it comes to financial literacy? The answer is research. Lots of research. Start by analyzing a large sampling of viable candidate solutions — say, 60 or more. Then, score each according to key criteria, like whether the solution is targeted, interactive, accessible, scalable, and effective. Finally, use that data to pick a handful of best solutions with the most potential.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is. But, here’s the good news: it’s already been done for you. All you have to do is check out the System Brief delivered this month by Credit Union Central of Canada. It’s called “Financial Literacy: What’s Best and What’s Next.” You can download it here.
Spoiler alert!FamZoo, our online and mobile application that helps parents teach their kids good money habits, is among the 8 selections for “What’s Best” culled from 67 candidates. And when it comes to “What's Next?”, FamZoo is among just three identified on the “Short Term” list as suitable for rolling out right away.
So, if you’re with a financial institution looking for what’s best and what’s next in financial literacy, we’d be delighted to set up a live, private online demo to show you how FamZoo works and how it can be customized for your institution. Just contact us here.
This issue previously described by this post has now been resolved. We truly appreciate the refreshingly candid explanation we received from the company’s CEO as well as the prompt resolution of the matter. Case closed.
The Spring Finovate conference that showcases emerging financial technology just wrapped up this week in SF. We weren’t demoing this time (we launched our FamZoo Partner Edition at Finovate last Fall), so we missed the live show (but we did appreciate the nice CEO Interview coverage on the Finovate blog just beforehand).
Whether you attended the show or not, if you’re looking for a very nice recap with quick thumbnail sketches and insights on each demo, check out this excellent FinovateSpring 2012 live blogging post by Erin McCune. You can also browse the #Finovate tweet stream for interesting (not to mention harsh at times) commentary.
Curious to know who’s taken home the Best of Show accolades each conference since 2007? Here’s a list I put together using List.ly. If you can't see it embedded below or want to access all of the social functions, click here.
The folks behind Finovate — the showcase conference in financial technology — just featured FamZoo and yours truly over on their blog. It’s part of their ongoing CEO Interview series. Find out why FamZoo started, how we're doing, and where we're headed as I answer the following questions:
You have 5 kids, how do you balance your family life with your startup life?
FamZoo recently landed a spot next to Kickstarter and Foursquare in Doreen Bloch’s book, The “Coolest Startups in America”. Can you give us some insight into what makes FamZoo so cool?
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve encountered since launching FamZoo?
What sparked the idea for FamZoo?
What’s the smartest move you’ve made since launching FamZoo?
What is your favorite feature of FamZoo?
You won Best of Show at FinovateFall last year as a first-time presenter. What advice would you give a startup preparing for their first Finovate demo?
Can you give us a sneak peek of what’s next for FamZoo?
Those certainly sound like admirable qualities. So, naturally, we were thrilled and honored to find out that FamZoo is among the 72 coolest startups in America profiled in Doreen’s new book. Want to see all 72 featured startups? Just scroll down to the list below.
FamZoo teaches kids about personal finance in a fun and interactive way. It’s an approachable brand with adorable cartoons.
She continues with kudos for our customize-ability to match the needs and values of any family, our smart distribution strategy, our Best in Show award from Finovate (good quote about our startup space, Jim), and our gift option for “forward-thinking grandparents”.
What does Doreen ding FamZoo for in the “Choppy Waters” section? Ha, not telling! To read our full profile and the profiles of the other 71 cool startups, grab Doreen’s book on Amazon. Want to read a quick interview with Doreen first? Check it out here on the New York Times Small Business blog.
Who else is chillin’ on the Coolest list? I’ve embedded the List.ly list below. The short descriptions and tag labels match Doreen’s from the book. Vote on your favorites by clicking on the thumbs up icon. Click here if you can’t see it, or if you’d like to filter it by the category tags, or if you’d like to sort it by options like “crowd rank”.
In the better-late-than-never category, I just stumbled upon the fact that we earned an “A” grade on the FinovateFall 2011 Report Card posted by the Filene Research Institute. Woot!
The report card expresses the opinions of 23 credit union leaders who accompanied Filene to the financial technology innovation show last year in New York City where FamZoo picked up a Best in Show award. Since the report card doles out 3 A’s, 3 B’s, and 3 C’s to the nine Best in Show winners, the “A” grade represents a best-of-the-best nod from the credit union perspective. We’re very honored by the accolade.
This excerpt from the Filene post explains the evaluation criteria used on the report card:
Nine ideas that were ranked Best in Show by the FinovateFall 2011 audience...have been given a report card grade based on the rankings of Filene’s evaluators, which factored in the viability of the idea, relevance to credit unions, and connection to a consumer need.
The evaluator comment next to our A grade reads:
Cool product. May be a play for credit unions to engage the next generation of members.
Interested? For more information about our youth financial literacy and marketing solution for credit unions, see here.
A few months ago, I was invited to demonstrate FamZoo’s online youth financial education solution to credit union innovation leaders and executives from across the US and Canada. They were assembled in Kansas City at the “big.bright.minds” meeting hosted by the Filene Research Institute. I was delighted to have the opportunity to demo FamZoo to such a motivated, innovative, high energy group. I was also intrigued to hear about all of the cutting edge projects driven by the Filene i3 working groups. Very cool.
After the meeting, Filene sent me all of the anonymous feedback on my presentation. (Attendees were able to submit comments on presentations in real time to an internal site.) It just dawned on me (umm, duh!) that this feedback is one of the most credible sources of testimonial information we can offer to credit unions who are deciding whether FamZoo is worth a look.
As proof of full transparency, I’m even including the handful of skeptical comments. Being a life-long engineering type, I’ve never been very comfortable with (or impressed by) much self-promotion, so that makes spreading the word about FamZoo a bit challenging at times. Since this comes directly from the mouths of attendees without any filtering on our part, I feel very good about passing it along.
Here are all of the comments verbatim.
Great tool to support credit union commitment to financial literacy.
Incredible concept, had to do this manually growing up and would have loved to have this! I see this going viral very quickly!
Absolutely love this idea! Can’t wait to talk to him more. Wonder if we can tie it to a gift card for older kids.
Really like the concept. It should create better members. I will certainly sign up as this serves a big need as a parent of 2 young boys. Great example of innovation and how it is created.
Totally sweet idea as a parent. Great tie for a credit union.
Love this! He is so passionate about this. Parents MUST teach this at a young age, if you wait until you have bills, budgeting it is SO overwhelming! Trust me. I am trying to figure it all out now. Financial education is so important.
FamZoo is a great idea and is of interest to us.
Oooh....we want this! I really like that this fit so well with our spend share save philosophy. Love that it involves the parents so thoroughly.
Love this for financial education for kids!
Great idea with a unique, applicable approach...we’ll be trying at home for sure!
Great product. I checked this out when I received my pre-reading.
I like the fact that this is an interactive education tool that ties back to daily life. I also like that it is driven by the family and not the Financial Institution. Need more time to see how it might fit with our brand/strategy. May have an interest in participating.
Very good presentation.
Like the concept. Ultimately we need to take all of this financial literacy stuff and consolidate.
Going to get this to my brothers and sisters for their kids to try I hope.
Great online content and partnering opportunity.
I believe experiential learning programs work far better than other educational approaches.
Wow. We couldn’t be more proud of those comments.
Now, to follow through on my promise of full disclosure, here are the handful of comments that registered anywhere south of positive, along with responses for each:
This will only work with very committed parents. I wonder if any parents have actually learned along with children. Many of their parents have never had any financial training.
I understand the concerns. At FamZoo, we know three key things viscerally from firsthand experience:
All parents want to equip their kids with basic personal finance skills, particularly in today’s scary economic environment.
Very, very few parents consider themselves financial experts.
Parents are insanely busy. In fact, family life can be a real zoo! Get it?
We’ve designed FamZoo with these three realities firmly in mind. We help you pass along personal finance fundamentals to your kids with minimal prerequisite knowledge and minimal effort. It’s mostly about instilling very simple, sound financial habits through consistent practice.
Once you take a few minutes to set up FamZoo, the consistency comes along for the ride. That’s because many of the capabilities — allowance, compound interest, recurring payments, chore reminders, weekly progress reports, etc. — just chug along on auto-pilot while you’re off juggling family, work, and the rest of your busy life. From time to time, when those “financial moments” pop up with your child, FamZoo is right there for you — helping you encourage rational fiscal behavior without all the typical emotion.
Do parents learn right along with their kids? You bet. Even those parents with a firm grasp of financial concepts often find that the process of collaborating with their kids improves their own personal finance habits. It’s a cool added bonus.
I think it's novel and likely very applicable, but like PFM I don't know that it would be pervasively used.
Point taken, but it’s a lot less effort than your traditional PFM tool (and those tools are getting easier and easier to use every year I might add). Kids just don’t have that many transactions to track, and virtually everything else is on auto-pilot (see comments above). It’s also more than a PFM tool. As far as kids are concerned, FamZoo is their credit union, and it holds their money. Technically, the accounts aren’t real — an account balance just represents an IOU from the parent to the child — but to a kid, that account balance is very real indeed. As a result, FamZoo is a very “sticky” application once families get started.
Good learning tool for kids, but a bit over-the-top.
I admit it. I packed a lot into this demo, showing back-to-back scenarios from my kids’ real-life experiences ranging from their young years all the way up through college. So, I’m not surprised if some found the presentation to be a bit overwhelming. The nice thing is you can start super, super simple. Then, as your child matures, you can add sophistication gradually as desired.
Or, maybe “over-the-top” was in reference to my neon FamZoo shoes. I’m afraid I don’t have a good defense for those...
Concerned about security and branding. Should a credit union let its member go somewhere else? What if a Bank buys Famzoo?
Security: First off, we don’t keep any real bank account or payment information stored anywhere on our servers. Nobody can get at your real money through FamZoo. Even so, we take security very seriously, because we value the privacy of our families. We use industry best practices and robust underlying technology to protect the personally identifiable information (like email addresses) for our users when they choose to supply it — optional in all cases except for the registering parent. Got a specific security concern? Just contact us to discuss.
Branding: Our Partner Edition allows you to easily mix in your own branding and targeted content along the top and sidebar of the FamZoo application pages using our self-service administrative console. You can also customize aspects of our default UI using your own (nerd alert!) CSS rules. Wondering if you can pull something off to meet your branding requirements? Contact us and let’s discuss.
Being bought by a bank: Really? Can’t imagine that scenario. We think that partnering with a wide array of credit unions, banks, financial advisors, and other financial organizations will help us spread good money habits to more families, more efficiently. That’s consistent with our mission. Being beholden to a single bank is not.
Can’t say it’s critical for the CU, but it should create better members.
Fair enough. FamZoo isn’t critical in the sense that your credit union can certainly function without it. But, credit unions operate to serve their members, not to maximize profit. So, if you’re genuinely interested in the well-being of your member families, believe in the importance of youth financial education, want to start connecting with your next generation members, and want to be top of mind when they transition to real world financial products, I know you (and your families) are going to like FamZoo.
It’s also super easy to roll out — no integration or IT fuss required.
One of the big.bright.mind credit union attendees went live with FamZoo Partner Edition just last week. Will your credit union be next?
Need more info about FamZoo Partner Edition? What is it? How does it work? What does it look like? Why is it good for my credit union and my members? How do I roll it out on our site? Check out this post.
Ready to schedule a live demo for your credit union? CLICK HERE.
FamZoo Partner Edition, our new co-branded version of FamZoo, is now available for financial institutions and advisors looking for an innovative new way to deliver effective youth financial education. Using Partner Edition, a financial organization can deliver FamZoo’s Virtual Family Bank directly to its client families. Partner Edition includes an administrative console wrapped around a built-in targeted advertising platform. Using Partner Edition’s self-service console, an institution can customize FamZoo’s appearance, schedule targeted offers, and monitor activity. The platform allows organizations to deliver the right offers at the right time to the right segment of their audience as kids gradually transition to real world financial products. For example, a financial institution might choose to highlight its teen-oriented debit card offering to all parents who have children between the ages of 13 and 17 or its starter savings account to parents of kids 12 and younger.
Please note: families who register and subscribe directly with us via FamZoo.com remain free from all advertising — just as before. Only families registering via a partner using FamZoo Partner Edition are subject to advertising and offers from that sponsoring partner.
The “formal unveiling” (OK, aside from my jeans, Bank of Mom & Dad T-Shirt, and orange shoes) of FamZoo Partner Edition took place last week in New York City at FinovateFall 2011, the premiere conference for showcasing new innovations in banking technology. The format consists of 63 companies delivering back-to-back, pressure-packed 7 minute demos over two days in front of roughly 1000 financial industry executives, analysts, press, and venture capitalists. To top it off, if you don’t heed the big red count-down clock and exceed your time limit, the Finovate staff rings a loud buzzer and unceremoniously cuts your microphone — whether mid-sentence or not. Pretty brutal, but we all know the deal going in, so fair enough.
I was super relieved just to make it through without getting “gonged” and without suffering any unnerving technical glitches. Several hapless presenters were not so lucky — ouch. Kudos to Chris for all the behind-the-scenes prep work and technical contingency planning, like our backup server that fortunately never got called into duty. (But, if it hadn't been there, you just know we would have needed it.) Oh yeah, and my apologies to the poor NYC subway passengers who became an unwitting audience for repeated ad-hoc mumbled rehearsals of my 7 minute schpeel in the days leading up to my time slot.
The videos of the actual demos are not up on the Finovate site just yet, but in the meantime, here’s a goofy little trailer we produced to generate a little pre-show interest:
We were absolutely thrilled (and, frankly, a little bit surprised) by the incredible interest and response we received. The audience voted FamZoo Best of Show and we received tons of genuine interest at our booth - and not just for our cool stickers! Really. Although, I must say my favorite moment was when the big, burly, tough, tattooed union guys who broke down the show booths came over to me to politely request extra stickers for their kids. How could I refuse? It’s the only time I saw those guys smile. Everybody loves cartoon stickers. They were a universal hit.
Last, but by no means least, I want to give a special shout-out to our two launch partners for FamZoo Partner Edition: Paul Comstock Partners and Jay Sanders (President of Maturity Planners and youth financial literacy educator in New York City — see Jay’s great blog). Your help and support was instrumental in ironing out those inevitable initial kinks when you deploy the real deal. Your passion for our product is insanely motivating. Jay, you were an absolute gem at our Finovate booth — I couldn’t have handled the crush without you!
To wrap up my thoughts on the show: I’m truly delighted to see an increasingly serious industry commitment to honestly teaching kids sound personal finance skills — not just check-the-box style efforts. It’s been a long road from day one in 2006, but we’re seeing lots of new activity in the youth financial literacy segment and a variety of creative approaches. That bodes well for kids and familes everywhere, and we’re proud to be a part of it.
P.S. If you find yourself in New York City and you like to walk, here’s a cool tip (thanks to my bro): check out the High Line Park — really, really cool.
For articles covering FamZoo’s appearance at FinovateFall 2011, see here.
Last Wednesday morning, I was interviewed by Joe Orlando of the Sacramento Fox40 local news station. The segment was part of a series on how parents can avoid the summertime “brain drain.” One way is to use the summer months to teach your kids the practical skills they don’t typically learn in school — like personal finance.
Paul: Kids, they pick up the video games and they put down the books.
Sabrina: It happens that there are things parents can do to keep their kids learning this summer. Joe Orlando introduces us to inventor Bill Dwight. He is here to tell us about his new virtual banking system.
Joe: I thought that brain drain was what I got because my kids were home all summer, that’s what I thought I got. Bill thanks for joining us this morning.
Bill: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Joe: I appreciate your time. I’ve always been one of those parents if you want something in the house, you know my daughter, she’s home this summer. I said do you want to make some money. She’s like yeah, dishes every day, $10 that week.
Bill: Well, that’s the thing; it’s a very personal decision. The important thing is that your kids have some of their own income whether it’s through allowance or working for chores or outside jobs or even just picking up change in the sofa but they need to make their own decisions. So we have a site famzoo.com that helps parents teach their kids good personal finance habits with our online virtual bank.
Joe: So I’m a parent, give me some tips, things I can do.
Bill: Well first, give them some of their income to spend and then split it between spending, saving, and giving. That’s a great personal finance tip. If you pull out first for saving and giving and investing and then spend what you have left you’ll be a great shape.
Joe: Okay.
Bill: The next thing, as a parent, you should encourage your kids to save so give them some incentives, maybe match their savings or match their giving or give them some accelerated interest. That’s where the famzoo.com comes in because you run your own bank and you’re the bank manager so you handle deposits, withdrawals, and payments. And you can also give them a very aggressive interest rate, much better than what you get down at your bank.
Joe: My daughter has decided she is saving because she wants to buy an Escalade for $70,000 so that’s a lot of dishes.
Bill: Well, on the site, what you can do is create a savings goal for her and you can show her just how many decades it will take to save for that Escalade.
Joe: Nice, I like that.
Bill: Because I did that with my daughter, she wanted a new Jetta.
Joe: You did, what did you do?
Bill: So we entered a savings goal and she was like okay, I get it. Now I don’t want a new Jetta.
Joe: Now you are seeing right behind us here, if you just want walk us through this a little bit.
Bill: That’s a savings goal right there.
Joe: What are we looking at?
Bill: This kid wants to save for an iPad and he’s realizing you know what; that’s going to take over a year, which is basically an infinite amount of time for a small kid.
Joe: Sure, sure.
Bill: So then, they go in and say well hey pops how about you give me 1% interest on savings.
Joe: Yeah.
Bill: How about I babysit every week and make $10.
Joe: Sure.
Bill: Well then, I can bring it in to November.
Joe: Well, not only that, this is a little family time because you are working with your son or your daughter and you are working together on this and you know, it gives you a little bit of time together and then that way when he or she grows up they’ll have a feel for how to manage their money.
Bill: And it’s not something they’re teaching in the schools.
Joe: No.
Bill: And it’s intimately intertwined with your values.
Joe: Right.
Bill: You say you don’t do allowance, that’s fine.
Joe: Right.
Bill: Don’t be swayed by what your neighbors are doing. Do what’s right for you, your family, and your financial situation.
Joe: Okay, any final advice in the last 10 seconds here Bill.
Bill: Well, come by, check it out, and you’ll love it. Here’s their online banking record here and teach them now before they get out of the house.
Joe: I like that. All right, thank you so much Bill. Guys, I think this is an outstanding thing for the kids.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Sabrina: Fantastic.
Paul: Kids learning that money is attached to the amount of effort required to get it.
Joe: Yes, gee what a novel idea Paul.
Paul: That’s really great and by the way Joe, the daughter that wants to get the Escalade, she’s going to be a junior next year.
Joe: She’s going to be a junior.
Paul: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Joe: Yeah, let’s break that down Paul – how many years and how many dishes?
Paul: You know what, that screen behind you is not big enough for the graph that we would be required. 7:21 at FOX40, thanks guys, that’s a great program. Let’s check weather now Dennis is looking at a hot day ahead.
So you’ve gone and volunteered to organize a financial literacy workshop for 80+ fidgety youngsters and jaded teens. Now it’s time to deliver. How hard could that be? Doh! Maybe Kristin Penner can help you. She pulled it off earlier this month. Read on to find out how...
This is a guest post for the FamZoo blog by Kristin Penner. Kristin is a member of the San Jose Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, an African-American organization of mothers who nurture future leaders by strengthening children ages 2-19 through chapter programming, community service, legislative advocacy and philanthropic giving.
Financial Literacy: a Healthy Lifestyle Cornerstone
Our organization, Jack and Jill of America, recently instituted a nationwide financial literacy program which aims to have our kids complete a comprehensive financial literacy curriculum by the time they graduate from high school. In planning for a multi-chapter children’s event titled “Aiming for a Healthy Lifestyle,” our San Jose chapter felt that financial literacy was an important cornerstone topic that should be addressed along with workshops on nutrition/cooking, gardening/sustainability, and exercise/recreation.
My challenge was to develop fun, interactive workshops to engage kids in financial literacy for this event, which brought together Jack & Jill kids from three SF Bay Area chapters. We had one workshop for ages 3-8 and another for ages 9-13, each with around 40 kids participating. The younger kids worked with Moonjar’s Spend/Save/Share banks and chore charts, while the older kids talked about savings goals and budgeting with the help of FamZoo’s savings planner and budgeting tools.
The Game Plan
Here is an outline of of the high level game plan we used for each session:
Session 1 for Ages 3-8: Earning, Spending, Saving, Sharing
After a quick intro:
Talk about where money usually comes from and the idea of “earning.” Hand out individual chore charts and FamZoo sticker books. Kids can put their names on these and parents/volunteers can help them add any responsibilities they want to track.
Brief talk with input from the kids about Saving, Spending, Sharing and the Moonjar banks.
Hand out Moonjar banks and stickers to put their names on their banks.
Help kids assemble their banks, put their names on the stickers, hand out
activity sheet packets.
Kids can do activity sheets from Moonjar curriculum, if time is remaining, or take them to do at home.
Session 2 for Ages 9-13: Savings Goals and Budgets
After a quick intro:
Savings and Goals — introduce some concepts, illustrated with FamZoo website.
Kids work in small groups (table groups) to complete goal-setting worksheet and come up with a savings goal to report back to the big group.
Groups report in and we run their numbers in the FamZoo Savings Planner tool to see how long it will take them to reach their goals.
Talk about strategies to get to their goals faster (earning extra money, buying smarter, saving more each week, earning interest).
Budgeting — introduce some basic concepts.
Whole group agrees on what is a reasonable clothing allowance per month.
Kids work in their small groups to come up with a clothing budget to fit within that agreed allowance using catalogs provided and adults in room to help out with prices.
With the help of some great volunteers and a lot of support from FamZoo and Moonjar, both workshops were quite successful. The kids were engaged with the topics and had fun working together.
3 Keys to Engagement
Are you planning a financial literacy workshop for kids? Here are a few tips I can pass on:
Keep it relevant. The kids responded best to big concepts when they could see the application to their own lives. For example, having catalogs from stores they liked made a clothing budget seem much more immediate and compelling.
Get them talking to you and to each other. Small group work really kept the kids engaged and on task. They especially liked coming up with shared savings goals like a trip to the go-cart track.
Have multiple back-up plans. I was grateful to have physical banks, chore charts and activity sheets for the younger kids when the power went out citywide just before the workshops began. I also had printed worksheets and at least one printed copy of my PowerPoint presentation for the second workshop, though (thankfully) the power returned for that session with just five minutes to spare.
Good luck with your workshop!
— Kristin
If you’re interested in this type of workshop and you’d like to contact Kristin for more information, please click here to get to FamZoo’s contact form. Mention that you’d like to get in touch with Kristin Penner, and we’ll connect you.
Got a suggestion of your own? We’d love to hear it! You can either contact us privately or just lob in a comment below.
Thanks so much for your help. We really appreciate it.
Use Our Referral Program
Does your family use our prepaid cards? Did you know you can receive a bonus delivered right to your primary funding card whenever you refer a new subscriber to FamZoo?
Interested? Read all about how our referral program works here.
Yeah, yeah, we know. Face-to-face communication is so “Old School”. But, the next time you’re sitting around chatting with fellow parents and the topic of teaching kids about basic life skills comes up, we’d be ever so grateful for a mention.
Or, suppose you find yourself thrust into an awkward silent moment with some random parents at a school function or sporting event. Feel free to use FamZoo as an icebreaker. You could say something like:
Hey, have you ever heard of FamZoo? It’s this cool site we’ve been using to teach our kids about personal finance and charitable giving. It works like this...
Voilà! Ice broken.
Send an Email to a Friend
If you know someone with kids who might appreciate FamZoo, we’d be delighted if you dropped them a quick email on our behalf.
Feel free to wing it, but here’s a cut & paste sample in case you need something to get you started:
Subject: Cool Site for Teaching Kids about Personal Finance
We've been using this site called FamZoo.com to teach our kids some basic personal finance skills. It's also a great way to get them involved in charitable giving. I think you'd enjoy using it with your family too. You can see a quick 2min intro video here:
http://bit.ly/famzoointro
Let me know if you have any questions or want me to show you how we've set it up for our family.
Mention Us in Your Facebook News Feed
Every so often, let your Facebook friends know you’re using FamZoo to teach your kids personal finance skills. Something like:
We're using FamZoo.com to teach our kids personal finance skills. Questions? Just ask me. Here's their 2min intro video http://bit.ly/famzoointro
Just sign into Facebook, type a status update into your News Feed page (or even cut & paste the one above), and click Share. It’ll look like this:
“Like” Our Web Site on Facebook
If you haven’t done so already, you can “like” our web site right here by clicking on the little Facebook widget below. When you click the Like button, you’ll have the option to add a comment that shows up in your News Feed as well. Need inspiration for a comment? See the previous section.
Comment on the FamZoo Facebook Page
We have a FamZoo page on Facebook at http://facebook.com/famzoo. Stop by and check out the Wall. Like, comment on, or share a recent post. Or, if something’s on your mind, weigh in with your own post.
Tweet about @FamZoo on Twitter
From time to time, remind your Twitter followers that you’re using FamZoo with your family. Something short and sweet like:
Using @FamZoo to teach our kids good money habits. Check out 2min intro video here: http://bit.ly/famzoointro
You can use this widget to send a Tweet right now.
Feel free to follow FamZoo and retweet some of our messages too.
Mention FamZoo in an Article or Blog Comment
We get a lot of nice traffic to our site when folks mention FamZoo as part of a thoughtful, relevant comment on a popular article or blog post out on the Internet.
Need ideas on the best, most relevant places to comment? Check out our ever-growing list of bookmarks here. We collect and organize new links to posts and articles related to family finance every day.
Comment on the FamZoo Blog
We post articles right here at least once a week: weekly roundups of family finance articles, tips for parents, How To videos, FamZoo news & stats — all kinds of stuff for parents who want to help their kids thrive in the real world.
It really boosts the credibility and the value of our blog when people like you contribute thoughtful commentary. Don’t be shy. Share your opinion. Be the one who gets the ball rolling!
Forward Our Monthly Newsletter to a Friend
How about forwarding our monthly newsletter to a couple of friends who might be interested?
Don't have one handy to forward right now? No problem. Just email your friends a link to our archive with all the past issues. Something like this:
Subject: Teaching Kids about Personal Finance
Hey FRIEND,
As a fellow parent, I thought you might be interested in this Newsletter from a site called FamZoo.com. We've been using it to teach our kids some basic personal finance skills and to get them involved in charitable giving. You can see the latest issues of their Newsletter here:
http://bit.ly/famzoonewsletter
You can click on the "join our mailing list" link on the right side of the archive page to subscribe.
Best regards, ME
Share One of Our Videos
Visit the FamZoo Channel on YouTube to see our growing collection of videos. If you see one that tickles your fancy, please share it with a friend. As a sample, we’ve embedded one of our Introduction videos right here:
If you’d like to see all the different ways to share it, you can click on the YouTube button in the lower right corner of the player. That will launch the video on the YouTube site in a separate browser window. From there, you can click on the Share button beneath the video player and pick your favorite mode of sharing.
Plaster Our Stickers All Over
We’ve got some fun stickers featuring Henry Payne’s delightful cartoon characters. If you have younger kids, they’re great for marking chore completions on paper chore charts. If you’re beyond the stickers-for-rewards phase, you can plaster them anywhere — laptop lids, cell phone cases, book covers, homework folders, you name it.
Check out this little slideshow to get a preview of our sticker pack:
If you happen to be striking up those Old School face-to-face interactions, and want people to have an easy way to remember that site you were raving about, grab some of our business cards. They feature Henry’s awesome drawings, and it’s always fun to see which avatar someone chooses. (You know, kinda like dog owners seem to look like their dogs.)
Watch this slideshow to see all the different cards that come in a pack:
Want some? Just contact us. We’ll send you ones with generic contact info on the back, unless you have some overwhelming desire to masquerade as one of us. Weird.
Hand Out Some Free Months
So you’re a giver are you? Maybe you’d like to shower your friends with some free months of FamZoo.
You can do it in style with these colorful coupon cards:
Just get in touch with us, and we’ll send you some cards along with your own personalized promo code to write on the back.
Buy a Gift Subscription for a Friend
Ah, you’re the super generous type. You want to give something to a friend and boost FamZoo’s bottom line at the same time. Bless you! A FamZoo gift subscription is just the ticket. Buy one (or ten!) here.
Send Us a Testimonial
Has FamZoo made a positive difference in your family? If you’re comfortable sharing, we’d love to feature your testimonial on the site and in our marketing materials. (We only list first names and last initials.) Just drop us a note with your story.
Talk to a Reporter
Are you comfortable having your name in print? We respond to media inquiries all the time, and reporters love to include quotes from real members. If you’re up for it, just contact us. We’ll keep your name on file for that next big story!
Walk the Talk in Our Custom FamZoo Shoes!
OK, this one’s pretty out there, but if you’re really, really, really into FamZoo, and you want to walk the talk, then you gotta get ahold of some of these babies:
