They didn’t have app-based custodial debit playing cards once I was a child, however my dad and mom nonetheless did what they may to organize me for monetary self-sufficiency. Now that I’ve my very own children, the attraction of a kid-friendly debit card I can effortlessly load, monitor, and management from my cellphone is obvious.
I’ve spent hours testing a number of common app-based debit playing cards for youths. Although not flawless, GoHenry is healthier than common, with strong monetary schooling options and a strong system for assigning and paying for chores. And it’s designed to develop along with your child, with paycheck direct deposit as they age into the workforce and versatile parental controls you’ll be able to dial again over time.
GoHenry does have flaws, together with a pricing mannequin that disadvantages bigger households and restricted financial savings and investing options. So it’s perfect for instructing one or two children the best way to funds, handle, and spend their cash extra successfully, somewhat than offering complete monetary providers for broods 4 or 5 deep. See the way it works and resolve whether or not it’s the proper custodial debit card app for your loved ones.
What Is GoHenry?
GoHenry is a monetary app for youths. Whenever you join, your child will get a Mastercard debit card you fund, monitor, and management by way of your dad or mum account. The debit card works wherever Mastercard is accepted, however you at all times have the ultimate say over the place and the way a lot your child can spend.
Notable GoHenry app options embody scheduled allowance transfers, paid chores, a simple means for family to ship cash to children, and direct deposit for older children who work outdoors the house. GoHenry has a complete lineup of monetary schooling sources as properly.
After a 30-day free trial, GoHenry prices $3.99 per youngster per thirty days. There’s no household pricing possibility, and there aren’t any plan tiers. All customers get the identical options and performance for a similar worth per child.
What Units GoHenry Aside?
GoHenry isn’t as complete as some competing apps, however it nonetheless has some standout options.
- Highly effective Allowance and Chore Options. Irrespective of what number of chores your children have or how custom-made they’re, you’ll be able to create and handle all of them out of your GoHenry app. You may also schedule a recurring allowance, tied to chores or not.
- Emphasis on Monetary Training. GoHenry has wealthy monetary schooling options: tales and fast classes for the youngest customers, tales for barely older children, superior modules for teenagers. The curriculum goes properly past what most rivals provide.
- 30-Day Free Trial. Few custodial financial institution accounts and debit playing cards include free trials. GoHenry does, and 30 days must be lengthy sufficient to resolve whether or not it’s best for you.
Key Options of GoHenry
GoHenry’s sole plan prices $3.99 per youngster, per thirty days, for all options and capabilities. GoHenry debits this payment every month out of your dad or mum account. In case your dad or mum account doesn’t come up with the money for in it, GoHenry pulls out of your linked exterior checking account.
Sure account actions and choices carry one-time charges, however you’ll by no means must pay a better month-to-month payment to entry core options.
Dad or mum Account
You management your child’s GoHenry expertise by way of your dad or mum account. You possibly can experience solo or add a co-parent with full account administration permissions.
Balances held in your dad or mum account have FDIC insurance coverage as much as the statutory most (at the moment $250,000 per account). However as a result of the account’s sole function is to fund your child’s debit card, you shouldn’t hold a lot additional money in there. Simply sufficient to fund their allowance, pay them for chores, and high up their debit card for permitted purchases. Preserve the remainder of your money the place it belongs, in your linked exterior checking account.
Within the dad or mum account, you’ll be able to:
- Get real-time in-app notifications about your children’ account exercise, together with purchases and declined transactions
- Block and unblock children’ debit playing cards if the playing cards are misplaced otherwise you’re briefly placing them in spending timeout
- Ship on the spot transfers (Fast Transfers) to your children’ debit playing cards at no extra cost
- Handle chores, allowance, and financial savings targets
Debit Card for Youngsters
Every child in your GoHenry account will get a Mastercard debit card that’s accepted by tens of millions of retailers worldwide.
GoHenry routinely prevents purchases from age-inappropriate retailers, equivalent to casinos, liquor shops, and tobacco outlets. Past that, you’ll be able to additional prohibit spending to stop purchases in sure service provider classes and at sure retailers. You may also set per-transaction spending limits to make sure your children can’t spend all their cash in a single place.
GoHenry is open to children between the ages of 6 and 17. As your children age into eligibility, you’ll be able to add them to your account and get them organized their very personal card. It’s fairly simple, as you’ll be able to see.
Allowance Funds
The default technique to fund playing cards is the allowance characteristic. You don’t must name it “allowance” in your family if you happen to don’t need — it’s only a recurring weekly switch in an quantity you’re snug with. You set the quantity and the day of the week to switch the funds to the child’s card.
The good factor about this open-ended characteristic is you’ll be able to dial it up as your children become older and achieve extra monetary duty. For instance, you may give your 7-year-old $10 per week and allow them to select a deal with or two on the grocery retailer whereas their 15-year-old sibling pays for his or her “portion” of the weekly grocery invoice with their $70 allowance.
Chores & Chore Funds
GoHenry’s hidden superpower is its chore characteristic. Within the dad or mum app, you’ll be able to arrange one-time or weekly chores and specify a fee worth for every. Mark a chore as full and GoHenry transfers the fee on the child’s subsequent allowance day.
Belief your child? Untick the “solely dad and mom can mark duties as accomplished” field within the Settings menu. That enables the kid to mark chores full themselves, which saves you the difficulty of confirming the job is finished and opening the app to mark it full. It’s a helpful little characteristic for older, extra impartial kids.
Financial savings Targets
Your youngster can arrange their very own financial savings targets within the GoHenry app. GoHenry funds every objective out of their weekly allowance and chore funds based mostly on the quantity of the objective and the goal date the kid units.
Whereas there’s no official restrict to the variety of financial savings targets your youngster can set, there’s a sensible restrict as a result of the cash comes out of allowance funds. Relying on what number of targets they set and the way a lot they wish to save, your youngster received’t have something left over to spend in the event that they’re too aggressive. Nevertheless, you or your youngster (if you happen to enable them) can switch cash out of targets they haven’t accomplished if crucial.
Your youngster can’t spend financial savings cash utilizing the GoHenry debit card. When a objective is absolutely funded, you or the kid releases it again to the debit card spending account. That makes it out there to spend on regardless of the objective was for. You possibly can hold cash in a totally funded objective for so long as you’d like — for instance, in case your child reaches their back-to-school financial savings objective in Might, they could as properly maintain again the funds for a few months.
GoHenry doesn’t pay curiosity on financial savings balances. If you’d like, you’ll be able to incentivize saving by manually paying “curiosity” by way of a one-time switch to the child’s account or a small improve of their weekly allowance. However it could be good for GoHenry to construct curiosity into the financial savings characteristic.
Teen Options
When your child turns 14, they get entry to 2 extra options: direct deposit and person-to-person funds.
Direct Deposit
Direct deposit is helpful for teenagers who’ve jobs. Your child units it up by way of their employer, offering their GoHenry account quantity and routing quantity.
In contrast to allowance and chore funds, direct deposit funds bypass the dad or mum account and don’t require any motion in your finish. They’re your teen’s to spend and save.
For safety causes, GoHenry manually clears direct deposit funds bigger than $500, probably delaying funds for youths with good-paying jobs. It’s not clear how lengthy this takes, however given GoHenry’s fast responses to my much less pressing customer support queries, I wouldn’t count on it to trigger important delay.
P2P Funds
GoHenry’s person-to-person, or P2P, funds work inside and outdoors the system. They don’t have to start and finish with a GoHenry consumer; they will undergo exterior techniques like Zelle too. So that they’re helpful even when your teen is the one GoHenry consumer of their social circle.
In-App Cash Classes
GoHenry has a pleasant number of age-appropriate monetary schooling modules. Referred to as Cash Missions, they’re organized into three ranges:
- Stage 1, or primary cash and monetary literacy subjects for youths 6 and up
- Stage 2, extra superior classes for youths age 12 to 14
- Stage 3, excessive school-level classes for youths age 15 to 18
GoHenry supplies little nudges and hints to maneuver children by way of the teachings. Badges and in-app sport prizes mark every efficiently accomplished lesson, with issue growing over time. All classes observe Ok-12 private finance schooling requirements developed by private finance educators and directors. They’re not simply coin-counting and monetary arithmetic.
There’s a seemingly countless array of Cash Missions in GoHenry. Even if you happen to use the debit card sparingly, I’d argue the app’s instructional sources alone justify the month-to-month payment.
Including Kinfolk to Your Account (Giftlinks)
Sick of these annual paper birthday checks? Add grandparents, aunts and uncles, and anybody else to your GoHenry account to allow them to give immediately. This safe gift-giving characteristic is known as Giftlinks, and it’s free to make use of, so there’s no purpose to not invite family in the event that they’re prepared to take part.
Custom-made Playing cards
You possibly can customise your child’s debit card with greater than 45 designs, plus add their first title in cute “go[name]” format. The default card fashion reveals the GoHenry brand on a plain pink background.
This is without doubt one of the few issues that GoHenry costs additional for. It costs a $4.99 one-time payment per customized card. However it’s a small worth to pay for a card your child enjoys toting.
Different Potential GoHenry Charges
GoHenry doesn’t cost many extra charges, however take a look at the payment schedule if you happen to’re curious. Notable potential charges embody:
- $1.50 per home ATM withdrawal
- $2 per worldwide ATM withdrawal
- 2.75% of the quantity of every worldwide transaction
- $4.99 per substitute card with a special design (the identical design is free, even when it was customized)
Benefits of GoHenry
GoHenry is simple and enjoyable for folks and children to make use of. These are its core strengths.
- Infinitely Customizable Allowance and Chores. GoHenry can substitute no matter system you employ to assign and monitor your children’ chores at house. It’s infinitely higher than my household’s “verbal reminder” system, however it’s additionally a big enchancment on spreadsheets or bulletin boards that aren’t built-in with a fee methodology.
- Easy Parental Controls. GoHenry’s parental controls are complete, versatile, and straightforward to vary. You possibly can customise your child’s spending expertise with just a few faucets within the app. And GoHenry routinely prevents your children from shopping for stuff from retailers they haven’t any enterprise at, like liquor shops.
- No Cost for Quick Transfers. GoHenry doesn’t cost for fast transfers out of your dad or mum account to your child’s debit card. That’s helpful in emergency conditions — say, your teen doesn’t come up with the money for for the bus house.
- 30-Day Free Trial Interval. GoHenry has a 30-day free trial interval. Primarily based on my expertise, that’s loads of time to resolve whether or not it’s best for you. Some rivals have 30-day free trials too, however many conventional banks don’t provide free trials on their custodial accounts. From the get-go, these accounts have month-to-month charges much like GoHenry’s.
- Wealthy Instructional Assets for Youngsters and Teenagers. GoHenry’s instructional sources are in depth and rigorous. From video games and brief classes to extra superior modules appropriate for highschool college students, this a part of GoHenry almost justifies the month-to-month payment by itself.
- Simple for Kinfolk to Chip in With Giftlinks. GoHenry’s Giftlinks characteristic makes it simple for grandparents and different prolonged members of the family to ship cash to child customers. Something that replaces paper checks and saves a stamp is a win in my guide.
Disadvantages of GoHenry
Most of GoHenry’s downsides are omissions — options that related apps have, however GoHenry doesn’t.
- No Investing Choices. GoHenry doesn’t have funding accounts for youths or dad and mom. That’s a disadvantage in comparison with Greenlight particularly, which makes funding schooling a precedence. GoHenry children can study investing within the instructional modules, however that’s not the identical as truly placing up their very own cash.
- No Curiosity-Bearing Financial savings. GoHenry’s financial savings characteristic doesn’t pay curiosity (a la Greenlight) or include a parent-paid match (a la BusyKid). You possibly can argue that the satisfaction of reaching a financial savings objective is sufficient, however a monetary reward would incentivize and educate children.
- No Tax Benefits. GoHenry doesn’t provide any tax-advantaged accounts. Some kid-friendly monetary apps, like Acorns, boast schooling financial savings accounts that may boring the sting of paying for school down the highway.
- Not Value-Efficient for Bigger Households. GoHenry isn’t cost-effective for bigger households. When you’ve got a couple of child within the app on the similar time, Greenlight’s base plan is a greater deal. FamZoo is a greater deal in case you have greater than two children within the app.
Is GoHenry Legit?
Sure, GoHenry is legit. The GoHenry debit card is backed by Mastercard. Balances held within the dad or mum account and on the debit card are FDIC-insured as much as authorized limits. The app is encrypted to the identical requirements as different on-line banking portals.
Actual GoHenry customers appear to love and belief it too. The app has hundreds of 4- and 5-star evaluations and greater than 2 million verified customers. There are different causes to decide on a competitor over GoHenry, however not as a result of the app is a rip-off. It isn’t.
How GoHenry Stacks Up
One among GoHenry’s closest rivals is Greenlight, one other kid-friendly monetary app and custodial debit card.
Greenlight has extra monetary options than GoHenry, together with interest-bearing financial savings with all plans and custodial investing in higher-priced plans. So it’s a greater guess in order for you extra than simply every day cash administration to your child. GoHenry is cheaper for one youngster and has extra strong schooling options, so it’s a superb fiscal entry level for youthful children.
| GoHenry | Greenlight | |
| Month-to-month Pricing | $3.99 per child | $4.99 for as much as 5 children |
| 30-Day Free Trial | Sure | Sure |
| Custodial Investing | No | Sure, for $7.98/month |
| Financial savings Options | Restricted | Intensive, with curiosity |
| Monetary Training | Intensive | Restricted |
| Direct Deposit | Sure | Sure |
Options to Take into account
Should you’re on the lookout for a extra complete or cost-effective monetary schooling app than GoHenry or Greenlight, you could have choices. Take into account these alternate options.
| Product | Greatest for |
| FamZoo | Making casual loans to children |
| BusyKid | Annual fee low cost (save 20%) |
| Mazoola | Avoiding bodily playing cards (all transactions are touchless) |
Ultimate Phrase
GoHenry is without doubt one of the higher monetary apps and debit playing cards for youths. It’s perfect for folks who need a greater technique to set up and pay for youths’ chores, and who don’t belief their children’ elementary and center faculties to supply age-appropriate private finance schooling. (Most don’t.)
With out interest-bearing financial savings or kid-friendly funding accounts, GoHenry falls brief in another areas. It’s not cost-effective for bigger households both. However if you happen to plan to have just one child within the app at a time or don’t want the investing stuff, it’s price a more in-depth look.
