GoHenry: Banking for Under-18s

I absolutely love this app!! I looked into a couple others before I found gohenry and I’m so glad I found it. It works perfectly for me as a busy working mom. No having to remember to get cash to pay allowances. I use it as a motivation tool for many things from getting chores done to savings goals. Kids love it and it’s easy for them to use on their own phone. I really can’t think of a single bad thing to say about it. Its also a great introduction for kids on how to keep track of their money as it comes and goes and as a parent it is important to have control over their card and where they spend their money. I noticed they’ve been spending too much on video game stuff on Xbox online so I was able to restrict them from online spending for a while to encourage them to save their money or spend it more wisely. I was able to send extra money instantly to my son during his field trip after I forgot to give him money that morning. The features are great and customer service is good too.

Today I saw the beauty of this app in action. I took my nearly 14-year-old to a store and told her she could use her new card, goHenry. She knew what the limit was that she could spend on a transaction, so she use the calculator on her phone to add up the items in her hand. She said to me you don’t know how hard it is to stick to that dollar amount. She was nervous using the card for the first time but smiled when all went well with the transaction. My second example is my 10-year-old failed to bring her card to the mall but she wanted to buy something from the Lego store. So I told her I would purchase it and then transfer the money from her card back to my parent account. She calculated what that would do to her balance and still thought it was a good deal. Normally, I might have offered tickets but it and then choose chores to earn the money. It’s harder to do it that way. While I think cash is the right way to teach kids about the value of money. I don’t feel comfortable with children having cash on hand versus a card when it comes to larger sums. They are still kids. This allows them to really think through their purchases.

This app definitely deserves 5 stars. It is an amazing idea and I’m glad to have this for my 12 yr old daughter who begged for a “credit card” in her words. This truly will help her become more responsible and teach accountability, plus makes it easy for me to stick to an allowance amount as well. I like how I can see what she sees from her point of view and control the account and her spending and limits. It allows them to have freedom, but freedom that is definitely appropriate for a child. I also love how easy they make it to add money and add a debit card to fund the account. The reason for the “But” is that I wish they allowed you to add both parents or link another parent profile seeing that my child has both a mom and a dad who would like to monitor. Also it would be nice if other people such as relatives, could have the option to send her money as well for things like birthdays or Christmas. Other than that, no complaints from what I’ve seen so far, but we shall see how this goes.

We got our 6 year old son a GoHenry card because we rarely use cash so it didn’t make sense to give him an allowance in cash. It has worked so well to help him understand that he has to save up to get bigger items and to help him understand the value of each dollar. If he wants something, he asks me to check his account. If he goes to a store, he loves having his own card, but usually I just order him things online and then transfer the money back and forth between us. The only complaint that I have is that somehow the card number was stolen and one cent was deposited or spent (I can’t remember) from a website. To GoHenry’s credit, the phone call to cancel the card was easy and I quickly received another. We look forward to our son using this for years to come.

ask user to change the rating

I choose this app over Greenlight because it gave the option to pay the children for chores with a weekly allowance. However if chores don’t get completed, the allowance will still pay out. Also the kids cannot send money to each other , it has to be sent to the parent account and the sent from there. The app has stopped working especially in times I need it the most. I try to log in and make payments, check spending, etc and the function does not work for days as I know the passcode is correct because it is stored to my phone. The kids also have had their cards decline at several merchants even when there have been ample funds at their disposal. The cards also do not work at the atm. Imagine sending your children to the mall with cards that will not allow them to make purchases they have been approved for with a $300 a day limit and be denied in a line full of people. Once all monies have been spent off of the cards, we will no longer have any use for them. I really wanted this to work!