Teach Your Kids Financial Responsibility with the Homey App

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post.

Getting kids to do their chores is a daily battle for parents. At the same time, we want to know that we are doing everything we can to help our children develop good financial skills. The value of hard work, earning their money and managing it responsibly are the basic lessons we can teach our children – and household chores are a way to grow those skills while still young and in a safe family environment.

New version of Homey – Chores and Rewards app allows parents to assign chores to the whole family and transfer allowance directly to kids’ bank accounts. Paper chore charts and star charts on the fridge are effective, but they require a lot of upkeep from parents. Given that 61% of kids age 11 now have their own smart devices, and 57% of children have bank accounts opened in their name, Homey makes it easy to track both chores and payouts for parents and children. By transferring allowance directly to the bank account Homey promotes saving and reaching long-term goals.

Other features of the app include setting goals – short, medium and long-term that kids can work towards. These can be allowance, extra money, screen-time, new toys kids wish for, products or activities. Homey shows them their progress and reminds them of their goals, so they stay motivated to keep working towards them. To start the conversation about appropriate goals Homey allows kids to add items to their wishlist. Parents can then approve those wishes if they decide and set the coin values of them – so kids realize how long they’ll need to work to earn those things.

Of course, there’s also the chore management system that’s at the heart of Homey. It allows parents to decide whether a chore is a responsibility (and kids won’t get paid to do it, but can still be required before allowance is paid out or privileges like daily screen time are earned) or a job that leads to rewards. Parents can assign chores to the whole family (even for themselves, so they don’t forget), set recurrence, due times, pictures and values. Parents can also give older or more responsible kids the option to add their own chores or even add chores for them – kids can then use Homey to let their parents know the lightbulb in their bathroom needs changing or they’ll need shirts ironed before next Wednesday.

How do you get started with Homey?

1. Download the Homey app for iOS or Android – the basic version is free to use forever.
2. Create a household and invite your family members or create profiles for them.
3. You, as the household creator, have all the features enabled. You will have set user roles for other family members based on their age, but you can customize all the permissions for everyone in the Household settings available in the sidebar.
4. Set chores – responsibilities and jobs.
5. Set privileges and rewards.
6. Kids do chores.
7. Kids get rewarded for chores. You can link also bank accounts to Homey and transfer allowance easily, without looking for spare cash every week when allowance is due.
8. Parents are happy.
9. Kids are happy.
10. No yelling :-)