Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Allowance For the 21st Century

An interesting first look at what might eventually be very well-appreciated online chore and financial management software for families: Kidzillions is a new web app, currently in alpha testing, that gives parents a way to let their kids manage their chores and money online. Parent sets up a list of chores to be done, attaching “reward” values to them, and kids can then go about fulfilling them and then setting up a list of things they’d like to spend their hard-earned cash on.

Here’s a young blogger’s take on it:

The traditional way of teaching the fine art of money management to young children is to expose them to the concepts like gathering up pennies, counting and storing them in piggy banks. As a teen, I still do that, and I love it, especially the process of seeing my money grow from a dollar to 1000 bucks.

To teach financial responsibility to your children requires a lot of time and patience. If you’re a busy parent and need to do many things on a daily basis, this is when technology helps you to be a better parent and yet at the same time accomplish your tasks.

This seems like a giant step forward for many parents raising kids in Western world, probably for two reasons:

  1. It recognises the increasing “cashless” reality of the world; I’ve yet to see a web service beyond this one that recognises a kid’s next purchase might not be at the corner shop with a jar of spare change, but on Amazon.com with a credit card. It looks like Kidzillions is doing everything they can to facilitate this, and perhaps add some concreteness back into what kids often might might otherwise see as a sort of mystical “online shopping” world.
  1. It attempts to put the power back into the kids’ hands: as they bill it, with Kidzillions “parents complete the transactions, but kids make the decisions and learn the lessons.” Again, keeping the financial lessons focused on the kids has been a bit tough in a world of online shopping – when kids aren’t actually handling any money. This is another way to incorporate kids more fully into the process.

If you’re interested in this stuff, also check out Kidzillion’s blog – the Allowance Project – and you might also enjoy this New York Times photo slideshow about one social effort in the United States that give kids a chance to learn “millionaire habits.”

Nov 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #