threejars.com promo code for $15 off (50% off) - manage allowance, teach your kids to save, invest and give back

sylvan said: b8b said: I use this service and my kids love it. It makes it easy for me to manage their allowance and spending and also teaches them how to save, invest and give back.

The kids have their own login and my allowance is allocated automatically, I can deduct for chores not done or add for special extras - they can also make requests to do extra chores, spend the funds (get cash from me), invest, or give to a variety of charities.

I'd never considered such a thing. Just curious, what advantages do you see with that service as opposed to literally using jars, cash, and checks? My kids are now 16 and younger. They started with jars (the plastic jars mayo and peanut butter come in are great) and graduated from there to savings account, then checking, etc.

Real jars is old school, reps for that, do whatever works for you. For me, it's much simpler to just use a computer - how can you tell the total in a jar? Sounds like a guessing game or a lot of extra time spent keeping track. Like I said, I was using a Google spreadsheet for this, but this is much more engaging, more automated, has investing and giving options, etc. I've done jars and piggy banks, neither did they find interesting. Once I even bought this coin/cash collecting sphere thing from ING Direct that had a calculator that kept the amount that you inserted, but that lost its novelty. This is all automated and easy to use. Plus, when they get older, jars will be much more antiquated then they already are for this purpose - there might not even be cash someday, all electronic transactions (I am not for this, just stating a possible reality of the future). I hardly use cash (nor checks, which are cumbersome and time consuming), and smart people have the cash in the bank earning interest (mine/their's is earning 5% right now), while cash sitting in a real jar is just losing value to inflation. Are those reasons any good? Perhaps not for you, but they are for me.

Of course when they get older, I will get them real bank and investment accounts. In the mean time, this teaches them a bit more about how the real world works (I suppose a jar kind of does, but not really anymore) automates what I was doing that was working and they're fully engaged, learning and finally excited about the process.

My wife is digging the chore charts and the kids are doing more chores then ever before, not sure if it is because they use the computer to check what they need to do or because they see how much $ they are getting for it or what. Pretty nifty.