This has been a fun TOS Crew review for our family.  Family Mint is a membership site for kids that allows parents to act as the children’s “bank.”  This idea intrigued me, especially since my two boys tend to lose their money frequently or spend it frivolously.  To be honest, I was not sure they would be interested in an online banking system since they usually enjoy physically having the money.  I could not have been more wrong!

As soon as I logged on and set up my three children on the site (we selected story names for our kids to make it more fun, and chose icons to describe their personality type), they wanted to set up goals for themselves.  The child can select goals for items they want to save up and purchase, such as sports equipment, games, electronics, clothes, college, entertainment, music, and the list goes on.  They enter in the amount the item will cost and a goal is set!  This has been so powerful for my 8-year-old, who wants to purchase a laptop and electronic sketchpad to work on Illustrator.  He researched the cost, entered it in and immediately began hounding me for ways he can make money. This was quite shocking as he is my least motivated child to earn money (he has earned $22 towards it so far).  This was great timing because that very day we had a snow storm and he earned $10 for shoveling the driveway.  Unfortunately it snowed for two more days and he “assumed the sale” by shoveling the two additional days (without asking).  What kind of parent would I be to not pay some additional bucks for such motivation? He has been Family Mint’s most faithful in our family, logging in money he has earned through weekly chores and special chores (which he does frequently now). What is nice is he can view his progress when he opens his account because his goal account graphically charts how much of his goal he has accomplished so far. Very cool.

While each child has their own account, the parent serves as the administrator, so all deposits, withdrawals and account activity must be approved by the parent.  This is not time consuming or difficult and requires a simple click of “Accept” or “Reject.”  You can also set up interest rates (I’m not this generous) for your child’s savings.

The main issues we have had to work out is how does the child get to spend the money?  We solved this problem by simply giving them the cash when they need it for purchases and deducting it from their account when we get home.  I have even heard some of my teammates say they are using this as a learning tool with their young children as pretend money.  That is a pretty neat idea, too, although we are already past that stage.  No more lost money and no more tears at the store because “I forgot my wallet, mommy!.”

There is one aspect that I really do not like.  Once you log in a transaction it totals up your entire balance, but I cannot find a way to go back and see a breakdown of the transactions once they have been approved.  This is very frustrating because sometimes I forget if I logged something or not, and I have no way of looking through individual transactions to see if I covered everything or not (like weekly allowances).  If this function is available I have not been able to find it, and this would DEFINITELY be something I recommend they add to their service.

We also plan on allotting each child a budget for shoes and clothing so they can purchase their own clothes and learn to budget these items (if you buy those $50 shoes, you will not have money for jeans,” is a great lesson to have before they leave home.  Family Mint makes doing this very simple.

Oh yeah!  Did I mention that Family Mint is FREE??  Need I say more?  Sign up now and try it out.  You will love it!

I was given a free membership in exchange for my honest opinion.  I was not compensated for this review.