Educating children about cash requires much more than giving them an allowance.
Dad and mom who need their kids to develop as much as be financially accountable adults know that youngsters who be taught the fundamentals of saving, spending, and curiosity are those who’ll be arrange for a financially secure future.
It’d shock you to be taught that analysis reveals that solely 23% of children say they discuss to their mother and father about cash, and youngsters who don’t obtain monetary schooling usually tend to find yourself in debt and to default on scholar loans.
No father or mother desires that for his or her kids!
Greenlight is a monetary literacy app for teenagers that makes it a snap for folks to pay their children an allowance, tie the allowance to chores and financial savings targets, and extra.
Children additionally get a Greenlight-branded debit card. Dad and mom who wish to prioritize monetary literacy might wonder if Greenlight is the correct app to make use of. Right here’s our take.
What’s Greenlight?
Greenlight is a household banking app whose mission is to show children handle their cash.
Dad and mom can arrange a household account and reap the benefits of an array of options to show their children to be financially educated and accountable.
Greenlight is out there for each Apple and Android cell units. It has a user-friendly interface (extra on that under) and a ton of helpful options that each educate and defend children.
You may select a pay as you go card and should you do, your cash might be deposited and held at Group Federal Financial savings Financial institution, an FDIC-insured monetary establishment.
Greenlight has some terrific sources on their web site, together with monetary schooling video games, a weblog, and their podcast.
You may handle your child’s account your self or add one other father or mother or grownup to assist out.
Professional Tip:
Greenlight is a household finance app that provides instruments like chore administration, financial institution accounts and playing cards, investing, and even security options for teenagers. Once you join Greenlight and refer your mates, you may earn as much as $600 a 12 months in referral bonuses!
What Options Does Greenlight Provide?
Greenlight presents options for each mother and father and youngsters. Right here’s an summary of an important bells and whistles.
Chores & Allowance
One of many issues that folks love about Greenlight is that it permits them to schedule children’ chores and tie their allowance to chores and monetary targets.
It’s straightforward to arrange chores for a number of children.
You may set the frequency of every chore, specifying whether or not it must be executed every day, weekly, or month-to-month. There are preset chores so that you can select from.
One other cool factor about Greenlight is that if mother and father wish to enable children to earn cash for doing further jobs round the home, there’s an choice to set that up and pay children as you approve their work.
Money Again & Saving
Children with a Greenlight debit or bank card can earn bonuses on financial savings and money again on spending.
Financial savings rewards rely upon which tier you select, as follows:
1% for the Greenlight Core Plan
2% for the Greenlight Max Plan
5% for the Greenlight Infinity Plan
Children can even earn 1% money again on purchases with the Max and Infinity Plans.
Investing
Greenlight presents funding choices for folks and youngsters with the highest two subscription tiers.
The father or mother funding choice can be included within the Core plan, however with “Lite” options.
With Greenlight Max and Greenlight Infinity, mother and father can ship their children cash to take a position.
Greenlight has tons of monetary schooling round investing, too, so mother and father can assessment fundamental funding ideas with their children.
As you may see, you and your children can try detailed inventory and ETF evaluation and you can begin your children off with as little as $1.
Security
Greenlight takes children’ security severely and supplies mother and father with a number of choices to guard their kids.
First, there’s the choice to set spending limits for teenagers and prohibit sure transactions or require parental approval.
That’s one thing that may be extraordinarily helpful should you don’t need your little one to rack up a whole lot of {dollars} of spending on video games like Roblox.
For older children, the highest tier of Greenlight presents extra security options together with Crash Detection, SOS, and drive monitoring.
Dad and mom can have the peace of thoughts of understanding the place their children are once they’re on the street and that they’ll attain emergency companies shortly if they should.
For Children & Teenagers
The most effective issues about Greenlight is that with any plan, you and your children will get entry to a ton of monetary schooling sources protecting every little thing from saving to investing to charitable donations.
The sooner children begin studying about cash administration and core monetary rules, the extra doubtless they’re to develop into financially secure adults who gained’t find yourself dwelling in your sofa!
Professional Tip:
Greenlight is a household finance app that provides instruments like chore administration, financial institution accounts and playing cards, investing, and even security options for teenagers. Once you join Greenlight and refer your mates, you may earn as much as $600 a 12 months in referral bonuses!
How A lot Does Greenlight Price?
Greenlight is a subscription service with three completely different tiers.
The bottom tier comes with fundamental options, and the 2 larger tiers provide elevated performance and banking options. Right here’s how the price breaks down.
Greenlight Core
Greenlight Core is the fundamental plan, which prices $4.99 monthly. The fundamental plan comes with these options:
Debit playing cards for as much as 5 children
Core monetary instruments for teenagers
Parental controls
Monetary schooling app
Greenlight Financial savings Reward of 1%
Greenlight Degree Up (monetary video games)
Investing for Dad and mom (Lite model)
This plan is good if you wish to do a trial run of Greenlight to see if it’s the correct choice for your loved ones.
Greenlight Max
The center tier of Greenlight is known as Greenlight Max, and the price of a subscription is $9.98 monthly. It comes with all of the options of the Core plan, plus:
Investing for Dad and mom (full model)
Investing for Children
Greenlight Financial savings Reward of two%
1% money again on purchases
Id theft, telephone, and buy safety
Precedence buyer help
If you would like to have the ability to make investments on behalf of your children and educate your children how investing works, this plan could be proper for your loved ones.
Greenlight Infinity
The highest tier is known as Greenlight Infinity, and the subscription price is $14.99 monthly. You’ll get every little thing that comes with Greenlight Max, plus:
Greenlight Financial savings Reward of 5%
Household location sharing
Crash detection (the app will contact 911 in case your teen will get in an accident)
SOS alerts
Driving experiences
Actual-time journey alerts
Households with youngsters might wish to go for Greenlight Infinity due to its enhanced security options to guard teen drivers.
How Does Greenlight Examine to Different Banking Apps for Children?
Along with Greenlight, there are numerous different monetary apps for teenagers. Listed below are a few comparisons that could be useful.
Greenlight vs BusyKid
BusyKid has lots of the identical options as Greenlight, together with debit playing cards, financial savings incentives, and funding choices, plus academic content material.
One characteristic that BusyKid has that Greenlight doesn’t is a bonus choice, which permits mother and father to reward their children based mostly on no matter standards they select.
The most important distinction between Greenlight and BusyKid is the price.
Greenlight’s costs begin at $4.99 and prime out at $14.99 for the best tier. BusyKid costs $4 monthly or $48 per 12 months for as much as 5 kids, making it considerably inexpensive than Greenlight.
It’s price noting that there aren’t any tiers for BusyKid options, which means all subscribers get entry to all options.
One other key distinction is that BusyKid makes it straightforward to cancel your subscription the place some customers have complained in regards to the issue of canceling Greenlight.
Lastly, grandparents and different kin can contribute to children’ accounts utilizing a QR code.
Greenlight vs GoHenry
GoHenry is one other fashionable monetary app for teenagers. It has two pricing tiers at $4.99 and $9.98, each of that are good for households with as much as 4 kids.
Each apps embrace academic content material to assist children find out about cash. Each provide parental controls to present mother and father peace of thoughts round their children’ spending.
Like BusyKid, GoHenry makes it attainable for kin and household associates to deposit cash into children’ accounts. In contrast to the opposite apps we’ve reviewed, it additionally permits for cash transfers from contained in the app.
Professional Tip:
Greenlight is a household finance app that provides instruments like chore administration, financial institution accounts and playing cards, investing, and even security options for teenagers. Once you join Greenlight and refer your mates, you may earn as much as $600 a 12 months in referral bonuses!
Execs and Cons of Greenlight
Earlier than you select Greenlight to show your children about finance, listed here are some execs and cons to contemplate.
Execs
Children get a debit card to assist them learn to spend responsibly
Dad and mom can set spending limits for teenagers and observe their spending historical past
Cash transfers could also be linked to chores and targets
Children earn money again and financial savings rewards once they use their card
Entry to monetary schooling and cash instruments
Sure transactions could also be blocked to guard children
Cons
Money deposits will not be an choice
The fundamental account has restricted options
Greenlight doesn’t work with P2P cost apps like PayPal and Venmo
Children’ accounts should be linked to a father or mother account, so it might be troublesome for folks with no joint account to share monitoring obligations
Greenlight isn’t free; month-to-month charges vary from $4.99 to $14.98
What Do Reviewers Say About Greenlight?
On-line reviewers have loads of constructive suggestions and feedback about Greenlight.
Dad and mom recognize the parental management options, together with spending limits and automated spending notifications that enable them to watch children’ monetary habits.
Dad and mom love the placement monitoring and different security options that present peace of thoughts for teen drivers.
Greenlight earns excessive marks for its monetary sources, which oldsters and youngsters can assessment collectively to instill wholesome monetary habits.
Greenlight’s 24/7 customer support earns plenty of reward from customers.
There’s no such factor as a product with out damaging critiques. Listed below are a couple of not-so-complimentary issues customers have mentioned about Greenlight.
There’s no free model, so that you’ll should pay to attempt Greenlight out.
Canceling Greenlight isn’t straightforward from contained in the app; you’ll in all probability should name the corporate if you wish to terminate your subscription.
For Greenlight to assist children, mother and father should be ready to watch the app.
On the entire, we expect the positives far outweigh the negatives. Each mother and father and youngsters can profit from utilizing Greenlight.
Remaining Ideas
Our takeaway is that Greenlight is an excellent app for households the place mother and father need their children to find out about cash from an early age.
Its academic content material and sensible options make it straightforward for teenagers to save cash, spend responsibly, and learn to make investments.
The most important potential draw back is Greenlight’s price, which is excessive in comparison with different apps—notably for the highest tier, which is the one choice the place you may get entry to all of Greenlight’s options.
To find out about one other platform with monetary schooling instruments, try our In search of Alpha assessment.
