How to track my kid's money?

[Dustin Henning]

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of
Liz
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 05:30
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: How to track my kid's money?

On Mon, 1 Oct 2012 11:02:21 +0200
Davide Imbeni <davide.imbeni at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have the exact same use case :-)
> I solve it with a liability account, as if I had a debt with my kids.
> Whenever their grandparents give them cash gifts, I get the cash in my 
> pocket and increase my debt towards them.
> When they'll be old enough to need an allowance, I guess I will start 
> increasing my debt weekly (from expenses->Children allowance TO
> Liabilities->Children debt), and decrease it whenever I actually give
> them cash (Assets->Cash in my pocket TO Liabilities->Children debt) I 
> even got as far as allowing a small interest rate for the money they 
> "lend" to me...

If you physically have the cash, then how will they learn to handle its use?
I do recall loaning my mother cash from my personal stash, and sometimes she
didn't pay it back, so some accounting there would have helped both parties.

_______________________________________________

I would be more worried about that behavior making the kids comfortable with
a cash-free society, which I believe to be more beneficial to financial
companies than anyone else (nevermind potential prophetical implications in
[possibly in multiple religions]), because it is psychologically more
difficult to spend cash than to swipe a card.  However, I want it to be
clear that I mention that as a philosophical point, and not as unsolicited
parenting advice toward Jim or David.  The opposite could be argued in the
sense that if the kids are taught to treat their effectively virtual
currency as cash, that psychological hurdle may occur to card swipes, which
would be beneficial.  That having been said, and since no one has claimed to
be doing so, making this point clearly not directed at anyone:  I definitely
recommend NOT using prepaid cards in the USA.  Most of them have outrageous
fees, and they could make kids more comfortable with living on debt (which
is currently a hot-button topic in the US).  One could argue that a prepaid
card is like a bank account, to which I would say give the kid a bank
account, because I believe a prepaid card is more like paying someone to
take a loan from you.  That having been said, if someone comes across a
prepaid card that doesn't have outrageous fees, then that might be a rather
elegant solution.  Nonetheless, different peope will have different opinions
of what constitutes an outrageous fee, and any card's terms could change at
any time, so caveat emptor.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 6578 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/attachments/20121001/0be9476e/attachment.bin>