Greenlight card and alternatives

[dglvrk2]

DD1 is 12. She's great at saving her money for valuable items and experiences. She's not good at keeping track of cash. She has earned a lot of money recently from babysitting gigs.

I've considered getting her a Greenlight card. She'd give me her cash, I'd put it on the card along with money she earns from chores and allowance for necessities. However, H does not like all of the fees attached to the Greenlight card... wondering if any of you recommend alternative cards to the Greenlight one?

I've also thought about loading some of her cash onto a gift card and putting the rest into her savings account.

I could simply deposit all of this money into her savings account, but she would not have easy access to it. Seems like a card or app would be easier...

Thoughts?

[gretchenindisguise]

We use greenlight for both kids and we love it. I have adhd and trying to stick with any other system has failed us. We also set them up with investing on it and are trying to teach them that young since I never really learned.

For babysitting, L gives me the cash and then I transfer funds to her. It's easy and the apps are intuitive.

With the level we use they also give us device protection, so we were able to cancel the duplicate provider through our wireless provider.

Is there something out there that may be cheaper? Maybe, but the mental load of coordinating it all is removed for me with this app so we will keep it.

[rere]

Dd and Ds were a couple of years older, so I do not know if there is an age limit, because it shows up as high school checking. But under our accounts we could get them a debit card that we could monitor and they could deposit money. They could also transfer over to a savings. Dd still uses it. It is pretty handy for us to transfer cash to them when we needed.

[waverly]

Greenlights sounds OK at this age. When they are older, I would just get them their own bank account and debit card from our bank. Usually I see this around age 16 when kids get their first jobs and direct deposit.

[iknowthismuchistrue]

We added DD as an authorized user on a backup credit card we do not ever use. She has her own card. No fees. Feel safer with a credit card vs. debit card. It will help her establish credit history (not all cards will do that at this age) and I really liked the idea of her having to pay for things on a delay to help her understand what it’s like to have to pay for things even when the appeal of some shiny new thing is gone. Paying monthly fees for the little bit of spending she does makes no sense to me at all.

[mommyatty]

I’m about to add DD as an authorized user on one of our accounts. Since I think she’s going to stick to field hockey, I see more tournaments in our future, and I never have cash. So I think I’m going to add her to our Discover card. Discover because if she misplaced it, we can quickly turn it off. I thought about adding her to our Amex, but a lot of places don’t take Amex.