One of the things we’ve struggled with when it comes to Cara is her idea that money is “free”…as in it comes from the money gods in the sky or something.
A way we’ve been trying to teach her the finite quality of money is by having Cara put her money in her piggy bank. How’s that for old school? That works great except when she gets gift cards–like happened at Christmas–and isn’t able to see the decreasing amount of money on the card.
Suddenly we were back to infinite money.
Cara’s old enough to make lists of stuff she wants so she’s old enough to learn that money runs out and once it’s gone, she can’t buy anything.
Here’s where I think Virtual Piggy will come in handy.
Tucker and I had been talking about setting up a chore chart for the kids and implementing figuring out allowances and we can do that with Virtual Piggy and pull directly from my PayPal account. I do just about everything with my PayPal account and it’s extra convenient for me that I can create my Virtual Piggy account by logging in with my PayPal account.

“…your credit card will only be charged once purchases are made.”
In addition to being able to set up an online allowance for Cara–which she can track, Cara can create wish lists with the “Piggy Pin” bookmarklet so she doesn’t forget stuff she thought looked cool and we can get an idea for presents for Christmas and her birthday.
Their app–iOS and Android–makes it easy for parents to track what’s going on with their kids’ accounts.
Virtual Piggy has partnered with several stores so there’s a Virtual Piggy checkout button on those sites, e.g., K’Nex, Stella and Super Sprowtz.
The list of sites with the Virtual Piggy checkout button is quite small and some of the places I’ve never even heard of, but, there are gift cards kids can purchase as well as over 250 charities kids can donate to through their Virtual Piggy account so that’s pretty cool.
The service is free so I’m more than willing to hang out, use what they’ve built thus far, and look forward to their network growing.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post from Splash Creative Media on behalf of Virtual Piggy. All opinions are my own.
Comments