FamZoo
A friend of mine from my Oracle days has developed a Web. 2.0 site called FamZoo. It's a website that helps parents teach their children how to manage money.
Here's how it works. It's basically a virtual bank (with the actual cash reserves held by the parents). Each of the kids has their own login on the website. When they login to the website, they see various accounts (spending accounts, savings accounts, and charitable giving (tithing) accounts). I've set up Karinna and Jeremy with automatic weekly credits for allowances. As the parent/administrator, I can also go in and manually credit their accounts for special work like folding the baby's laundry, or for rewarding good behavior. Whenever Ye-ye gives them "toy-money" I keep the cash and make the appropriate credit to their account. When we go shopping and the kids want to buy something, I ask them "How much money do you have in FamZoo?" If they don't know, then we don't buy anything. If they provide me with the correct balance, I ask them if they can figure out if they have enough funds to cover the purchase. Sometimes they have enough money, but the decision to spend it is questionable. This is hard, but I let them make the decision and I buy the item on their behalf (Jeremy once bought a stack of 7 Pokemon cards for $4...). I then go home and deduct the purchase amount from their FamZoo account. As long as they have enough money, I let them go ahead. But if they don't like what they purchase later on and they want to buy something else, I ask them if they have the funds to cover. If they don't have the funds to cover (especially because they wasted the money on something else) I remind them that they made an earlier decision and they need to understand the consequences. This works pretty well with Jeremy. By nature, Karinna is pretty conversative with her spending. However, she's done some charitable giving where she really understands what she's trading off with regard to money she could have spent on herself.
There's a lot of other stuff in FamZoo (to support automatic savings, charitable donations, planned savings goals, etc.). However, we've kept it pretty simple so far and I like how it's progressing. Karinna and Jeremy have a safe way to practice making their own spending decisions. They are starting to understand abstract concepts like fiscal responsibility and personal accountability for their decisions.
If any of you are interested in finding out more, feel free to check out these YouTube demo videos...
Introduction Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sSgVzk9_ALQ
Quick Tour Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lFb_S9Zs0h8
If you want to sign up, send a request to info@famzoo.com. (It's a free service... at least, for now)
Here's how it works. It's basically a virtual bank (with the actual cash reserves held by the parents). Each of the kids has their own login on the website. When they login to the website, they see various accounts (spending accounts, savings accounts, and charitable giving (tithing) accounts). I've set up Karinna and Jeremy with automatic weekly credits for allowances. As the parent/administrator, I can also go in and manually credit their accounts for special work like folding the baby's laundry, or for rewarding good behavior. Whenever Ye-ye gives them "toy-money" I keep the cash and make the appropriate credit to their account. When we go shopping and the kids want to buy something, I ask them "How much money do you have in FamZoo?" If they don't know, then we don't buy anything. If they provide me with the correct balance, I ask them if they can figure out if they have enough funds to cover the purchase. Sometimes they have enough money, but the decision to spend it is questionable. This is hard, but I let them make the decision and I buy the item on their behalf (Jeremy once bought a stack of 7 Pokemon cards for $4...). I then go home and deduct the purchase amount from their FamZoo account. As long as they have enough money, I let them go ahead. But if they don't like what they purchase later on and they want to buy something else, I ask them if they have the funds to cover. If they don't have the funds to cover (especially because they wasted the money on something else) I remind them that they made an earlier decision and they need to understand the consequences. This works pretty well with Jeremy. By nature, Karinna is pretty conversative with her spending. However, she's done some charitable giving where she really understands what she's trading off with regard to money she could have spent on herself.
There's a lot of other stuff in FamZoo (to support automatic savings, charitable donations, planned savings goals, etc.). However, we've kept it pretty simple so far and I like how it's progressing. Karinna and Jeremy have a safe way to practice making their own spending decisions. They are starting to understand abstract concepts like fiscal responsibility and personal accountability for their decisions.
If any of you are interested in finding out more, feel free to check out these YouTube demo videos...
Introduction Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sSgVzk9_ALQ
Quick Tour Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lFb_S9Zs0h8
If you want to sign up, send a request to info@famzoo.com. (It's a free service... at least, for now)
posted by ivan at 11:42 AM
1 Comments:
Cool. I had heard about a related site the other day and was planning to sign up. But better to do it with a friend-of-a-friend.
Thanks for the pointer, Ivan.
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