Say YES to Kids' Allowance - Part 2 Use the iAllowance app


Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today we are talking about giving an allowance to kids.  This is Part 2 of a 3 part series.  Part 1 went over the basics.  In this 2nd one, we'll talk about how to administer an allowance with a minimum of fuss (I use the iAllowance app) and in Part 3 we'll discuss some tips for youngish teenagers and allowance. 
My kids were little when we started this process -- they were both 5. They are now 13 and 15 and they are still getting an allowance.  In fact, it is more important than ever.  Again, I think you can start at any time -- it's never too late. I went through several methods before I landed on the one that has worked best for us. Let's go through them quickly.
  • Cash Weekly - At 5, their abstract thinking was not very developed, so I decided to give them physical dollar bills. I only gave them Spend money -- I kept track of Save and Charity balances for them. I used to give allowance once a week. Well, this fairly quickly became something I couldn't sustain. Having exact change every week was a real challenge for me.  So, after a couple of years of irregular allowance I switched over to . . .
  • Monthly Ledger - they got paid (and still do) on the first of the month -- Pay Day!  I got them both notebooks with pages for Spend, Save & Charity and had them add in the allowance at the beginning of the month and subtract when they made purchases. I sat with them to do this and used it to teach a little bit of math as well.  
  • Monthly App - After years of doing this, I decided to automate the whole thing.  They didn't need the math anymore, I wanted a more portable system that we could refer to when we were at a store, and I liked not having to remember when it was Pay Day.  I tried a couple of options before settling on the iAllowance App. I'll include a link to the app in the description of this video. 
Here are some of the things I like about iAllowance:
  • Multiple kids and accounts - I added in both of my kids and then put in 2 accounts for each - one for Spend and one for Save.  You can go to Bank Totals to see balances for both accounts or go to each ledger separately. 
  • Separate Charity - I chose to keep Charity separate, so my kids didn't start thinking they had more money than they really had.  Plus, this money doesn't really belong to them, so it's best to keep it mentally separate. I have 2 accounts under Charity, one for my son and one for my daughter. 
  • Automatic Deposits - this is my favorite part. You can set up automatic deposits.  Under Allowances, you can see I added in a recurring transaction called Monthly Allowance. I set it to happen on the first of every month and it deposits preset amounts of money into both Spend and Save accounts (not sure what is happening with the incorrect math total here, but I'll figure that out later).  Because Charity is a separate account, it has its own recurring transaction that, on the first of the month, deposits money into both kids' accounts. 
  • Syncs using iCloud or Dropbox - I like that this application syncs through either iCloud or Dropbox. It means that I can use this on my iPad and iPhone, but also that my kids can have it on their phones since we all use the same Apple ID and thus iCloud account. I feel pretty strongly about using the same Apple ID as your kids -- if you are interested, I posted an earlier video on that.  I haven't had great success with the syncing function, which makes me nervous. As a result, I do 2 somewhat neurotic things: 1) I record the totals for each kids' account on a spreadsheet once a month (I also take the opportunity to let them know what their balances are) and 2) I tend to input all transactions from one device (my iPhone) and just use the other devices as "viewing" devices. Which brings us to . . .
  • Parental Controls - I like the fact that my kids can see their account balances on their phones, but I DO NOT want them to be able to add or subtract funds from their accounts. I still maintain control of that.  My daughter might be trustworthy in this regard, but FOR SURE my son would sneak in a $100 deposit transaction and bury it somewhere in 2014, so that I would have to first notice and then do a bunch of digging and reconnaissance to unearth the problematic transaction.  Hard pass on this. I'm carrying enough around in my head without having to remember the amounts of their bank balances. Conveniently, iAllowance has nice parental controls to handle just this situation. If you go into Settings (the gears) and then turn parental controls on (you have to put in a security question that your kids wouldn't know -- I'll do what is your favorite color?  Then type your answer in twice and save.  You may have to kill the app, to get the parental controls to kick in for the first time, but once they do, the kids can view accounts and totals, but cannot enter any transactions. Genius. 
  • Chores and rewards - I don't use this feature, but if you do link allowance and chores, or just pay your kids to do certain activities around the house like mowing the lawn or washing the car, you can use iAllowance to streamline that. They have a really slick list of chores that you can choose from, or you can create a custom chore. 
Okay -- now we've done the basics of giving your kids an allowance and how to administer it with a minimum of fuss.  Join me in Part 3 when I talk about through tips for teenagers.  Leave your questions and experiences in the comments section and thanks for watching!
iAllowance (Allowances, Chore Charts & Rewards) by James Spencer

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