Suckered by a Semi-Sketchy Site — Now What?

You see a promotion on social media.

You click through and make the purchase.

Then you have second thoughts about the site.

It’s semi-sketchy.

It’s not a clear-cut case of straight-up phishing fraud where your money vanishes into the ether without a trace. There’s an actual website with featured products, legal terms of service, and even a prominently displayed support contact.

So, what’s the sketchy part?

Guiding Your Family to Better Money Habits Without Conflict

A FamZoo parent recently asked:

“I seem to remember that there was a way to generate a chart of balances over time. Where can I find that? One of my kids is religious about saving. One spends almost everything they have. I’d like to show the balances to them.”

Specific answer:

You’ll find a chart of the monthly closing balances under Bank > Balance History.

• You can select the desired account from the dropdown in the upper right.
• You can adjust the duration from the dropdown in the left-hand sidebar.
• You can click on a bar in the chart to navigate to the underlying transactions.

Broader answer:

Stepping back, there’s a bigger question and objective here: what does the transaction history say about my family’s money behaviors, and how can I nudge them toward good money habits going forward (without alienating them)?

Find Your Family’s “Frictionless” Spending

When you have to type your card information into a site or app — or make a payment in person with a swipe, dip, or tap — that little bit of friction creates a small “speed bump” to spending: a brief moment to reconsider whether the purchase is really worth it.

Friction is the enemy of mindless spending.

On the other hand, mindless spending thrives when all friction is removed.

So how do merchants remove spending friction?

By storing your card information as a convenient, automatic payment method.

The result?

• Free trials turn into subscriptions you didn’t mean to start.
• Subscription payments continue long after you’ve stopped using the service.
• Small purchases for in-game items and downloaded media pile up.
• E-commerce checkout becomes a little too easy.

That’s why one of the simplest ways to rein in mindless spending is to periodically identify all the places your card is stored on file with a merchant.

Fortunately, FamZoo makes this very simple.

Three Tricks To Get More Treats From Card Searches

FamZoo’s built-in search and analysis tools for card activity are among the most powerful of any family card platform. They help parents become better money mentors. With FamZoo, parents can see all the card activity details they need — the what, when, how, and why behind any issues kids encounter with their cards.

Here are three quick tricks to help you uncover even more “search treats” hiding in plain sight:

Boredom-Free Budgeting Practice for Kids

Budgeting is a critical life skill. So, it behooves your child to learn some budgeting basics before leaving the nest. But, like any skill, budgeting takes practice to master.

Unfortunately, few things sound more boring to your kid than: “Let’s build a budget together!’

How do you beat back the yawns? A little AI, an interactive scoreboard, and a cash bonus opportunity.

Try this technique using ChatGPT, Google Sheets and FamZoo. (Of course, you can substitute your favorite AI chatbot, spreadsheet, and payment method.)

Give Kids More Say Over Their Money

In her July “5 Things To Try This Month” newsletter, Gretchin Rubin writes:

“A Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast listener wrote in with a parenting hack: Offer a choice to children, even if it’s a small choice, such as going to bed at 7:30 or 7:34. Like everyone, kids want to feel some amount of control over their daily lives.”

That tiny bedtime choice may seem silly, but it taps into something profound: kids crave a sense of control.

Not only does a stronger sense of control make kids happier, I believe it leads to better learning outcomes and more effective habit formation as well.

With that in mind, what are some financial choices we can give our kids while still setting appropriate boundaries?

Here are seven examples:

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”:

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:

Teach Kids How to Sniff Out Card Phishing Scams

Have you coached your kids to be on the lookout for sketchy calls, text messages, emails, and sites?

Unfortunately, advanced AI technologies are escalating the frequency and sophistication of phishing attacks. Your kid’s cards are in the crosshairs.

This classic example of a phishing text landed on my phone just the other day:

You Want To Buy What?! Write Me A Proposal

The whole point of allowing your kids to manage some of their own money is to learn basic financial skills through firsthand experience. Learn by doing. Often, that means learn by failing too. Making a bad financial decision and living with the consequences is a powerful teacher. Like the time my daughter blew her annual clothing budget on a Neiman Marcus chiffon gown for the prom. Going cold turkey on clothing for the rest of the year left a far more indelible impression than any preemptive, eyeball-roll-inducing lecture I could have given.

So, does that mean you should let your kids buy anything they please with their money?

Beyond Cash and Gift Cards: 4 Creative Financial Gifts for Kids

“Hey kid, here’s 20 bucks.”

“No thank you,” said no kid ever.

That’s right. No kid is going to hate you for handing over cold hard cash as a present this holiday season. The same holds for gift cards, as long as you get the brand right. That might be a little trickier than you think, judging by the billions of dollars worth of unused gift cards floating around out there.

And while cash and gift cards aren’t the most imaginative gifts, at least some folks get pretty darn creative on the packaging. Maybe you can even try your hand on some clever money origami this year.

Still, wouldn’t you feel a bit more thoughtful giving a financial gift that isn’t purely focused on immediate consumption? Perhaps something a bit longer term and, dare I say, educational?

I know what you’re thinking. Yawn. But bear with me, I’ve got some cool options that are worth your consideration.

Boost Your Kid's Money IQ with a Simple Spreadsheet

Let’s face it. Your kid’s piggy bank isn’t cutting it any more.

Sure, it was a fine first introduction to the most rudimentary concepts of money, but your kid is a smart cookie. Basic lessons learned.

So when are you going to take your kid’s money IQ to the next level? Your youngster is perfectly capable of grasping the following and more:

• How bank accounts work.
• How to track income and spending as numbers instead of coins.
• How to avoid costly debt.
• How to put money to work with compound interest.
• How to allocate money to specific financial goals.

That sounds like a daunting parental task, but it doesn’t have to be.

You can do it all with a simple spreadsheet. That’s how I started out with my kids, and I’m not alone. The wildly popular financial blogger Mr. Money Mustache is doing the same. He’s using his “Bank of Mr. Money Mustache” spreadsheet to teach his young son about money too.

Does Your Kid Have The Bad Money Gene?

Perhaps you’ve heard of behavioral economics — the study of the role psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors play in economic decisions. It explains why we’re such suckers for those cleverly worded BOGO offers and other sneaky marketing tricks. Our emotions, stereotypes, and rules-of-thumb interfere with our ability to make strictly logical financial decisions.

But what about our genetic makeup? How do our genes influence our financial decision making? That’s what the emerging field of neuroeconomics is all about. Can you blame your kid’s lousy money behavior on his 5-HTTLPR gene? Maybe a little. Check out Your Genes Might Affect Your Credit Score to see how a Stanford University study linked variations in a specific gene to riskier financial decisions and lower FICO scores.

Turn Your Teen into a Shopping Errand Machine

Usually the combination of a teen, a car, and money is enough to scare the daylights out of any parent. Here’s how to turn that terrible trifecta into a big win: send your teen on shopping errands for the family. It gets your teen off the couch. It saves you time. It provides plenty of opportunities for teachable money moments — like how to comparison shop.

Win. Win. Win.

Here’s an extra bonus for families with FamZoo prepaid cards: we just made the whole “Mom/Dad, can you pay me back for the stuff I just bought?” routine super-simple by building in some new app(lication) features dedicated to streamlining reimbursements between family members.

For example, just this week, my wife sent our son, Will, on a grocery errand to pick up some grillables for the family dinner.

Here’s the expense as it appeared on Will’s Transactions page in the FamZoo app:

Naturally, Will wants to be repaid — and pronto. So, he taps on the arrow just beneath the amount to get to this Request Reimbursement form:

How to Put the Squeeze on Your Fattest Money Habit

What’s your fattest money habit?

Come on, you can be honest. Everybody has at least one discretionary spending indulgence that deserves a good belt tightening. Dining out? Clothing? Entertainment? Online shopping? Morning lattes?

It’s easy for those discretionary expenses to get lost in the noise of all your other transactions. By the time you tally everything up at the end of the month (assuming you’re doing that — wink, wink, nudge nudge!), even that seemingly innocuous habit can add up to a big number. The damage is done. As Ben Franklin wisely said: “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” So, you vow to reform next month, and the next month, and...

How do you break the cycle? Here’s a very simple recipe for isolating and trimming your fattest money habit.

Striking a Balance with Kids and Money

The truth is somewhere in between.

That phrase comes to mind a lot while parenting. (If you’ve ever sorted out the claims of two bickering children, you know what I mean.)

It also comes to mind when teaching kids about money.

Spending. Saving.

Limits. Leniency.

It isn’t just one or the other. It’s about balance, and that theme shines strongly in the Spending chapter from the new book Smart Money Smart Kids. (Why am I reading the new book by Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruze? See the first post in this series here.) In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see the theme of balance so prominently represented throughout the book. Why? Let’s be honest, Dave Ramsey has a reputation for being, well,... harsh. But Dave has a real soft spot when it comes to kids. As he puts it:

Positively Parenting and Personal Finance for Kids

Roxanne Lochridge is a “Mama” to 3 youngins, a positive parenting evangelist, and a “family scientist.” In a recent interview, Roxanne grilled me on the following topics:

• [00:00] Who the heck are you?
• [01:24] How did you get involved in helping parents teach kids personal finance skills?
• [04:03] What is a virtual family bank?
• [05:50] When should kids start learning about personal finance?
• [07:55] Should parents pay their kids an allowance, and if so, should that be tied to chores?
• [10:47] Do you have any tips on teaching kids to budget?
• [15:55] How do you teach your kids about planning for and paying bills?
• [18:01] Are prepaid cards a good idea for kids?
• [19:45] What are your thoughts about giving your child a loan?
• [23:02] How do you encourage your kids to save when their saving and investment options have such tiny returns?
• [26:47] What are some good ways to introduce kids to philanthropy?

Want to know the answers? You can listen to the interview here or click on the links above to jump right to the answer in the transcript below.

10 Good Money Habits to Teach Your Kids in 2014

2013 is coming to a close, and it’s time to make those dreaded New Year’s resolutions again. Pffft! Are you tired of making and breaking the same old promises each year? You know: lose weight, exercise more, quit your favorite vice, blah, blah, blah. Not.

How about switching it up with something new this year? Something that can really change the lives of the people you care most about. Something concrete and doable. Here’s my simple suggestion: resolve to teach your kids good money habits.

Don’t know where to start? Intimidated? Here’s a list of 10 simple habits that will put your kids on the path to financial responsibility:

Jumpstart Your Virtual Family Bank with a TripleGift

Money probably ranks right near the top when it comes to gifts that are well received by kids. No brainer, right? So, what does a kid love better than a wad of money stuffed in a birthday or holiday card you ask? Three wads of money stuffed in a card, of course! That’s what a TripleGift is.

But, wait. It it’s not as crass as it sounds. In fact, it isn’t crass at all. A TripleGift is the thoughtful way to give a monetary gift. That’s because the other two wads of money aren’t for spending. They’re for saving and charitable giving. Each TripleGift greeting card comes with three labeled pouches for spend, save, and share funds. It’s a great way to send a thoughtful, balanced money message to a child on a special occasion: money is about much more than just spending.

So what could be even better than a TripleGift card? A TripleGift card plus FamZoo, of course. Turn that positive TripleGift money message into an ongoing personal finance education. Tuck a FamZoo gift subscription inside your TripleGift card so the recipient can immediately deposit their new funds into spend, save, and share virtual family bank accounts.

Better yet, if you can plan it with the child’s parents, give them the FamZoo gift subscription in advance so they can register their virtual family bank, order spend/save/share FamZoo cards, preload some initial funds onto each, and stuff the FamZoo cards into the TripleGift pouches for the recipient ahead of time.

Interested? To learn more, check out my guest post over on the TripleGift blog.

You can order a TripleGift card here and a FamZoo gift subscription here.