Allowance tracking on Palm?

I know we have a number of Palm users here, so....
does anyone track their kids' allowance on their Palm Pilot?

I've decided to stop giving my kids physical money for their
allowance, and just track their accounts in my Palm. They
usually don;t have their money with them when they want it
anyhow, so this is much easier. Right now I am just using
a spreadsheet in Documents to Go, but I'd really like something
that automatically adds the pre-set amount each week for us.
Does anyone have a good method or piece of software to do this?

Thanks,
--Robyn

Robyn Kozierok wrote:
does anyone track their kids' allowance on their Palm Pilot?

...I'd really like something
that automatically adds the pre-set amount each week for us.

There are several programs that could be adapted for this: some are
designed to keep track of money in accounts (eg. Visa, savings, cheque)
and some are budgeting programs.

The only one I am familiar with is Quik Budget (USD 19.99):
http://quiksense.com/QuikBudget/

It has "wallets" allowing you to split a budget into various categories,
each with a particular amount being added to it each payday.

Set up one wallet for each kid and you'll see:

Name Budget Remain
Ryan 20 5
Matthew 10 15
Evan 10 80

Each payday (set it weekly), the remaining funds in each wallet are
increased by the budget amount. When you hand over some cash or buy
something for them, tap on the name to add an expense (deduction).

You can also set up automatic overflow into a different wallet when a
certain limit is reached. Eg. you could edit the Evan wallet and say
"send to Evan-Savings if over 250"...

--
Nathan Jones

Nathan Jones wrote:
Robyn Kozierok wrote:

does anyone track their kids' allowance on their Palm Pilot?

...I'd really like something
that automatically adds the pre-set amount each week for us.


There are several programs that could be adapted for this: some are
designed to keep track of money in accounts (eg. Visa, savings, cheque)
and some are budgeting programs.

The only one I am familiar with is Quik Budget (USD 19.99):
http://quiksense.com/QuikBudget/

It has "wallets" allowing you to split a budget into various categories,
each with a particular amount being added to it each payday.

Set up one wallet for each kid and you'll see:

Name Budget Remain
Ryan 20 5
Matthew 10 15
Evan 10 80

Each payday (set it weekly), the remaining funds in each wallet are
increased by the budget amount. When you hand over some cash or buy
something for them, tap on the name to add an expense (deduction).

You can also set up automatic overflow into a different wallet when a
certain limit is reached. Eg. you could edit the Evan wallet and say
"send to Evan-Savings if over 250"...

I don't like this, so I won't be doing it

Call me a Luddite, but one of the things *I* really liked
about getting an allowance was, er, *getting* the allowance --
having it handed to me so I could hold the money actually
in my hand and all.

I also don't like the fact that Mom or Dad has to keep track
of how much money a child has to spend. I think the
ability to keep track on your own of how much money you
have without having another person tell you is a good
life skill. It also would caused problems for me for
the kids always to have access to their allowance. It's
a nice out to say to DD or DS that they can't buy
something right now because they left their allowance
at home.

Of course, we don't have a cell-phone either.

From the 20th century...

Scott DD 10 and DS 7

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 06:30:33 EDT, Scott Lindstrom
wrote:

Nathan Jones wrote:
Robyn Kozierok wrote:

does anyone track their kids' allowance on their Palm Pilot?

Call me a Luddite, but one of the things *I* really liked
about getting an allowance was, er, *getting* the allowance --
having it handed to me so I could hold the money actually
in my hand and all.

I also don't like the fact that Mom or Dad has to keep track
of how much money a child has to spend.

Being the devil's advocate here ... what do you do if your kids don't
have their money with them, but want an impulse buy? Does it depend
on whether you think the purchase is a good idea? What if it's near
the end of the month or the end of the week (whatever their allowance
period is) so they won't have the money until Saturday, but really
want to buy a souvenir today?

I agree with you that having the physical money helps in understanding
budgeting. Heck, when I was a grad student, I used to do that myself
-- get $50 cash for the week rather than use credit and debit. Our
kids got cash once a month from about age 6 to late elementary school,
and then got cheques for a couple of years, but there was an awful lot
of lending money because they didn't have it with them, not
remembering to give them the allowance on the 1st and trying to work
it out in a museum gift shop three days later, lending money to cover
the time until the cheque cleared, or lending money at the end of the
month. Now they get/got their allowance by automatic deposit to their
bank accounts, and they do/did more than half their spending by debit
card. At least one of them would have preferred cash, but both of
them appreciated having it appear on time without having to remind the
parents or wait for them to have the right cash on hand.

Aside 1: Hurray for banks that don't levy service charges on
children!

Aside 2: Our elder has been away at college for a little less than a
month, and I'm not used to that yet. Hence the odd grammatical
construction.

Louise

In article ,
Scott Lindstrom wrote:
Call me a Luddite, but one of the things *I* really liked
about getting an allowance was, er, *getting* the allowance --
having it handed to me so I could hold the money actually
in my hand and all.

I also don't like the fact that Mom or Dad has to keep track
of how much money a child has to spend. I think the
ability to keep track on your own of how much money you
have without having another person tell you is a good
life skill. It also would caused problems for me for
the kids always to have access to their allowance. It's
a nice out to say to DD or DS that they can't buy
something right now because they left their allowance
at home.

My 7-year-old son gets a monthly cash allowance. He values it much
more than his bank account, which has much more money in it. He can't
count the money in the bank, lay the bills out flat, or run out to the
ice cream man with with his bank account. (We have limited him buying
popsicles only on Sundays, but we made the argument on nutritional,
not financial grounds---his allowance is his money to spend, save, or
waste as he chooses.)

It seems to me that having a parent act as the wallet and the banker
defeats much of the purpose of an allowance, which is to have the
child learn to handle money and budgeting themselves.

When my son wants to buy something, but does not have his wallet with
him, I will sometimes offer him a loan (if I approve of the purchase).
The loans are interest-free, but I expect him to pay me back as soon
as we get home. This has worked out fairly well, allowing him the
freedom of not having to keep track of his wallet all the time, while
still making it very clear when he is buying something for himself,
rather than having me buy something for him.

Of course, we don't have a cell-phone either.

Neither do we---they seem to be more of a nuisance and expense than
they are worth. They are also a major hazard for bicyclists and
pedestrians, because they distract drivers from paying attention to
where they are going---but that is not really a topic for this
newsgroup.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

I think about 99% of the "money" that I spend is electronic debits of
one form or another, not physical cash. My children will grow up into a
world where that percentage is even higher. It seems a good thing, to
me, for them NOT to be dependent on physical possession of money in
order to make purchasing decisions or apply budget constraints. That
seems like the path that leads to overspending as soon as children get
their own credit cards and bank accounts.

David desJardins

In article ,
Kevin Karplus wrote:
When my son wants to buy something, but does not have his wallet with
him, I will sometimes offer him a loan (if I approve of the purchase).
The loans are interest-free, but I expect him to pay me back as soon
as we get home. This has worked out fairly well, allowing him the
freedom of not having to keep track of his wallet all the time, while
still making it very clear when he is buying something for himself,
rather than having me buy something for him.

We use a variation of this in our household. The bank of Mom and Dad
has issued each child a virtual credit card. The limit is their
weekly allowance and the card must be paid off each week. So if a
wallet is left at home, or they want something that will cost more
than what they have on hand based on their allowance savings, they can
use credit up to their limit. So far it has worked well, getting us
past problems with the kids wanting souvenirs, etc. at places. They
have also been fairly cautious about using the credit once each got
over the initial shock of being handed the cash for their allowance
one week and then having to give almost all of it back to pay off their
credit card debt.

I figure the reason we are giving the kids an allowance is to learn
how to handle money. Nowadays they have to learn how to handle credit
as well, so having a virtual credit card makes sense.

Carol Hulls

In article ,
Scott Lindstrom wrote:

I don't like this, so I won't be doing it

Call me a Luddite, but one of the things *I* really liked
about getting an allowance was, er, *getting* the allowance --
having it handed to me so I could hold the money actually
in my hand and all.

My kids actually don't seem to care about that part.

It also would caused problems for me for
the kids always to have access to their allowance. It's
a nice out to say to DD or DS that they can't buy
something right now because they left their allowance
at home.

Hmm, I'd never say that. I don't expect my kids to carry
their money with them. If they see something they want to
buy, I ask if they want to spend their own money on it, and
if they have enough. If so, I lend them the money.

However, I am really bad about remembering to pay them and
about having correct change available, and equally bad at
remembering to collect when I lend small amounts of money.

So far they really like having their total kept in my palm.
They can ask for a balance anytime they want. They have
budget categories that they distribute their allowances into,
and I track all that on my palm, so they can find out how much
they have in any category. It's like having it in the bank,
basically, but easier to get out to spend when they want it.
(They do each have bank accounts where they sock away larger
amounts of "saving" money until they think of something to
spend it on, and we'll still have them do that as well.)
Bank of Mom.

--Robyn

I think you can get quicken or MS Money for PDAs.

However, a spread should work just fine.

Scott Lindstrom wrote in message . ..


I don't like this, so I won't be doing it

Call me a Luddite, but one of the things *I* really liked
about getting an allowance was, er, *getting* the allowance --
having it handed to me so I could hold the money actually
in my hand and all.

I also don't like the fact that Mom or Dad has to keep track
of how much money a child has to spend. I think the
ability to keep track on your own of how much money you
have without having another person tell you is a good
life skill. It also would caused problems for me for
the kids always to have access to their allowance. It's
a nice out to say to DD or DS that they can't buy
something right now because they left their allowance
at home.

I'm no luddite, I've got a Palm and my son has my old one. :-) But I
absolutely hate this idea too, for another reason. One of the great
things about having an allowance you can hold in your hands is that
learning experience called "vicarious thrills spending". You know,
when you are in the grocery store and see some stupid toy you know mom
won't buy you, but you absolutely HAVE to have...

If your mom is keeping your money, you're much less likely to spend
your money unwisely, and isn't the *point* of having an allowance
learning how to handle money without parental interference? I don't
see why a child of 10 can't carry his own wallet with his own money.
If he doesn't have it with him when the urge to buy a snickers comes
upon him, then he doesn't get the snickers. Lesson learned about
planning ahead.

I really don't like the idea of parents interfering in any way with
allowance. If the money is the kids, then they get to do with it what
they will within reason. Once a parent has a say in it, even if the
say is, "You ought to think about this because you're saving for that
new dvd, REMEMBER???", then the whole point of learning financial
responsibility is lost.

FWIW, my kids are pretty much spendthrifts, but they're combining
their savings because they believe they are going to buy a TV/DVD
player for their floor of our house. Over my dead body, but the saving
continues unabated with the desire intact. I'm curious to see how much
they can accumulate and it's a riot to see them beg to hit the grocery
store so they can use the coinstar machine. :-) (Yes, I know there is
a fee, but it's worth it to reduce the fighting to a minimum.)

Marjorie


Of course, we don't have a cell-phone either.

From the 20th century...

Scott DD 10 and DS 7