If you’re among the growing ranks of parents using prepaid cards to put money safely in your kids’ hands, here are 24 tips for making the experience educational as well:
- Configure the card to avoid financial bullying.
- Teach your kid a simple secure PIN strategy.
- Challenge your kid to card fee bingo before first use.
- Use instant notifications to put some pain in cashless payment.
- Give your kid a prepaid card for online gaming, save $7,625.88.
- Use multiple cards to run your own private family banking system.
- Use a simple reimbursement process to make your kid aware of how expensive everyday life is.
- Use reimbursements to condition your kid to maintain a spending buffer.
- Turn the next treat outing into a mini budgeting lesson.
- Ding prepaid declines to train your kid to avoid future overdraft fees.
- Remind kids it’s 3 PIN strikes and your card’s out!!!
- Run your own family card reward program that racks up points for less spending.
- Play the Sweep-To-Savings Game with your kid.
- Show your kid how to avoid a ridiculous 14.2% tax on cash.
- Ding your kids for replacements to discourage cavalier card handling.
- Teach your kid to keep a backup stash of cash on hand (or under foot).
- Give your kid’s card a meaningful label to encourage the right habits.
- Give your kid’s allowance transfers a meaningful description to reinforce purpose.
- Compartmentalize money for different purposes on separate cards.
- Set up text alerts that report the balance after every transaction to stay on budget and tip off fraud.
- Lock the card when it’s lost or stolen or just in need of a little financial time-out.
- Teach teens how to use prepaid cards at the pump without massive hassle.
- Make teens pass the No Decline Prepaid Challenge before opening a checking account.
- Use a hybrid card strategy to help teens build credit while staying on budget.
Got your own clever prepaid card hack for kids? Share it!
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