Zefty: Simple Allowances for Kids

If you’re a parent of young kids and you fancy a crack at being a virtual banker then you should give this one a go. Let’s face it you couldn’t do any worse than the bunch of real ones running the worlds finances at the moment!

As the bank of Mom and Dad you can use Zefty not only to organize the kid’s allowances but to get them on the road to learning about depositing money and saving for those things they always seem to want immediately.

The mechanics are simple, register and set up an account and deposit virtual money to the value of their weekly or monthly allowance. Don’t worry you’re not parting with real cash here, well not yet anyway.

The idea behind this is fairly sound and aimed at cutting out the need for kids to be constantly in possession of cash. When they want something they just have to visit the bank and get the cash and leave it to Mom or Dad to make the necessary withdrawal entry on Zefty. Likewise if they make money anywhere else or get cash for birthdays and Christmas then they should be encouraged to bank it with Mom and Dad who will make a credit entry to Zefty.

Kids can even print out a ZeftyCheck and present it to their parents which is a fun way of getting them used to banking in the real world. Another useful feature lets them enter the details of a much wanted item and then tells them how long they’ll have to save their allowance for it.

The final feature might I suppose be considered good or bad depending on your situation. The ZeftyCalc function helps parents decide what is a fair amount to pay their kids based on household income, children’s ages and what sort of chores you have them doing. These sorts of questions sound a bit like real banking so I’d understand if parents chose to ignore them.

Conclusion
This is a great and simple way to get kids to learn the value of money and the basic mechanics of banking. Let’s just hope that when they are old enough to go out into the real world that there are actually some real banks left!