I'm looking into getting my kids debit cards. Has anyone used Greenlight or Movo? What are your thoughts? We would like one that would be easy to monitor and allow for us to pay them for their chores.
We use Greenlight for all 4 of our kids and love it. It's easy to limit spending, give allowance, and see purchase history. The kids get used to using debit cards as well, and I can add money to their cards from my phone in a pinch.
+1 for Greenlight. My co-parent and I use it to fund allowance on a schedule and certain other purchases - gives us great visibility across the two homes so everyone stays on the same page.
My middle child got a summer babysitting job last year and suddenly had a lot of money, so we went to our family bank (Key) and signed her up for a debit card. Nothing special in terms of promotional deals, apps, or targeted at kids. We signed our oldest up at the same time. Because my wife and I have all our accounts with this bank, they gave our kids a favorable set up without penalties. We can manage their accounts (watch the spending, add money) from our phones. Key Bank does a good job.
We use Greenlight. It's not getting a huge amount of use because the kids are young, but it's very convenient to track their accounts and move money around. Best feature is allowance, where I can allocate it to spend/save/share.
Greenlight has a feature called "parent interest", that applies an absurd interest rate to kid savings. The interest is paid by the parent. I think my kids are getting a 10% annual growth rate on savings. Of course, this still isn't enough to motivate them...
I'll have to check out Greenlight. For investing principals, I gave the kids custodial brokerage accounts a while back and helped them pick out some stocks. Dek is convinced enough that he's thinking about moving some of the allowance money he's been saving up.
We've used Kachinga and Copper and one from Umpqua where my son's accounts are. Kachinga has a great app that is super feature rich that helps with managing chores, auto paying allowances, parent interest, split between save/spend/donate and has some financial education for the kids. Copper is a little more straightforward as just a kid debit card, transferring money with some financial education. Both Kachinga and Copper are local PNW start ups. Umpqua is just a straight up debit card with no kid specific features.