Teaching your kids to manage money with apps

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - Ava Chan, 10, and Marcus Chan, 8, displayed no hesitation in listing their least-favorite household chore.

"Laundry," Ava said.

"Taking out the garbage," Marcus said.

"From bringing down the laundry to undoing the dishwasher, folding their clothes, opening the shades in the morning," mom Suzanne Chan, of Bayside, Queens, said.

Suzanne founded and runs the blog momconfessionals.com. She also assigns the laundry-carrying and trash-removing duties around the Chan household and pays cash for their completion.

"It's pretty cool," Marcus said.

"Allowance—because they need to start earning their keep," Suzanne said. She just started experimenting with some apps to track chores, savings, goals, and expenditures with and for her kids, including a digital debit card for Ava.

"Every time I give her cash she loses it and it drives me nuts," Suzanne said.

"We've actually used FamZoo as a tool in our family that can help her track her goals and look at that and I look forward to using some of the investment tools with her," said Amanda Clayman, a financial wellness psychotherapist.

She watched her daughter save months' worth of allowance to buy a tech gadget. Clayman praised the thinking behind the dozens of allowance apps as tools to teach kids how to manage their money and how every adult must do the same.

"Children need to experience handling money," Clayman said. "Money is something that we can only learn about in part by being taught rules."

"It's really hard to teach kids that in this digital world," Suzanne said.

In the Chan household, allowance instills not only financial responsibility but also independence.

"There are toys I don't want them to have but if they earn it, I really can't say anything about it," Suzanne said.

"Star Wars: Battle Front II," Marcus said.

"I tried to get a stuffed animal I really wanted," Ava said.