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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

Really silly and not related, but I've tried half a dozen of these things for managing my kid's allowance and general spending, and they have all been a PITA. Either my kids can't sign up without a drivers license and credit check, or they can't send money to me or between themselves, or something else entirely. Maybe Apple has fixed this, but I do remember also trying Cash, and there was some deal breaker for my use.

Anyway, I ended up just writing a Matrix bot* that's a glorified spreadsheet. It's 600 lines of Rust, or probably 100 of Python. Works a treat!

* https://github.com/pkulak/bots/blob/main/src/bots/money.rs

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Have you not tried Greenlight? My 3 kids have had greenlight cards since they were 12. The mobile app UX isn’t great but it checks all the boxes on features.

Few products have made our personal lives so much easier. Not having to ever get/give cash for them is amazing.

Yeah, that was one of the first. But my kids couldn’t send me money, which sucks cus it’s my CC in Steam/Nintendo/etc, and I don’t want to have to add 2 more everywhere.

We have our children pay us using a card payment terminal. Ours is from SumUp, I know plenty of other brands do them too. I'm happy to eat the transaction costs for the ease of use.

A terminal should work with any product that functions as a debit card, pre-pay or not. As it happens, my children do have actual current accounts behind the cards they use. But it seems like UK banking is becoming less willing to issue full-spec debit cards to younger teens :(.

Not sure about the age requirements or other account specifics, etc. But it seems like you should be able to use Apple Cash for allowances and such

From the FAQ: >How do I add money to my Apple Cash card? >If you’re under 18, money is added to your Apple Cash card only when someone sends you money.

I use a Capital One MONEY account for my kid. It's a pretty standard fee free checking account for him (minus the actual paper checks) but it allows me to see what he's doing, add/remove money, and turn his debit card on/off as I wish.

Does Matrix have a money feature (excuse my ignorance), which can be controlled by bots?

Oh, sorry, no. Matrix is just the UI for a bot that does all its own accounting.

spriggy

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