Family Mint

If your kids lack money management skills, Family Mint can make money management fun and educational for your kids. With Family Mint, the parents are the bank and your children manage their money by setting goals and entering transactions. In other words, you act as a real bank would. Kids can see where their money came from, where it goes, and how much they have.

And the best part? This is a free program!

The first thing we did while creating an account, was to name our bank. We choose Good Sense Bank (my husband's idea). Then we created individual user accounts for each child. To make this fun, we gifted each child by making a $5 deposit. Here's the kicker ~ we require a $5 minimum balance at Good Sense Bank (just like many bank accounts do). Each child was eager to deposit all their money and create goals and then start transferring their money into savings accounts for each goal.

What makes this work is that every dollar in the bank is a real dollar that you owe your kids. When they hand you cash (make a deposit), you owe them that money and need to pay it back when they ask for it (just like a bank). But, you are not really depositing the money online ~ Family Mint is just a tracking system. (My husband asked me to keep their money in a special spot and not spend it like a real bank would, lol).

Each child was able to pick a different icon to represent their account (which is funny because I have an icon on my online bank account, too).

Instead of using the allowance feature, we gave each child a monthly "salary" for doing their chores. On the first of the month, each child gets half his age in wages for the month. I then took their salary and divided it by 30. Each day that their chores are not complete, I withdraw 1/30 of their salary from a special account. So, for Jordan, who is 13, his salary is $6.50 a month. His daily penalty for not doing his chores is 22 cents. At the end of the month, what ever he has left will be transfered into his general savings account to be used. Then from the wages he receives, he will transfer 10% into a tithing account.

While there is an option to pay interest, we do not charge family interest. Even in real life, we do not believe in charging brethren interest (and we do not pay interest because we do not believe in debt). So interest at Good Sense Bank is set to 0%.

In the bank settings, you can choose to have all transactions approved. We are requiring each child to make a deposit or withdrawal with a teller (mom or dad).

Here is a screen shot of Dylan's account and how we are using this program:
Dylan's goal is to keep 100% of his salary in his account. As he loses money for not doing chores (just as he would lose money for not working in real life) he will see the blue bar start to fall. (Note that I locked the account so that money cannot be transferred until it is unlocked). I think this will visually help him to see how he is doing. I may even offer extra work for the kids to earn some extra money. So far, all the boys are doing well with keeping up with their chores and I think this is a fun system for them.


This is a free product that I reviewed for the TOS Homeschool Crew and no compensation was received. I offer my honest opinion. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.

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