review – Family Mint

Maybe you were like me and ventured out on your own without having a clue how to even open a bank account. Family Mint is a tool that can help your kids learn how to budget and manage money while they are still young.

Family Mint is a free online virtual savings plan. You, the Banker, set up an account for each child. There is junior interface and an advanced interface, depending on the age of the child. No real money is deposited or withdrawn. This is a tool to help them manage their money and set financial goals.

Here are some of the features:

• Automated Allowance
• Automated Interest
• Matching Deposits
• Transactions
• Goals
• Personalization

My husband has been between jobs during this review time, so allowances have been on hold (hope my kids don’t expect back pay!). His lab will be up & running soon, and allowances will be back on the table.  FYI – we do allowances at the end of each month according to age, 12 yr. old gets $12 a month, etc. Here is how I will use Family Mint:

• Automated Allowance – I am terrible at remembering to actually get cash and hand it out. I will set up the accounts to automatically add an allowance to a child’s account each month.
  
• Transactions – My kids usually don’t have money with them, so we buy things for them and they pay us back later. We are not going to give them cash anymore (unless needed). We will just transfer funds from their “account” to ours. We will be giving them cash for tithing – I think it is important to keep that hands-on & not virtual!
  

Family Mint is a great tool even if you don’t do allowances in your family. Print out  play bucks (down on the left) and try out some of these ideas that our Crew members thought up:

• earn bucks for video game/tv time
• buy refreshments at  a family movie night
• do extra chores to earn towards a special event/item
• print out play money & checks and play “bank teller”

The Nitty Gritty:

• FREE

Value: Can’t get much better than free!

See what my TOS Crew Mates have to say about Family Mint!

No compensation was given for my honest review.