Chores are a major point of contention in many households, but getting kids to pitch in is an important part of raising them to become responsible adults.
Chicago entrepreneur Ada Vaughan’s solution is to treat chores more like an actual job. Her company, Chore Check, has developed an app to help parents become more organized managers — and to teach their kids about money along the way.
“It gives a way for parents to pass on their financial values to their kids,” said Vaughan. “And entrepreneurial youngsters love logging in, checking off their chores and earning money.”
Designed for families with children ages six to 15, Chore Check lets parents assign a monetary value to individual chores, paying their kids for each chore they complete. The app also has a money management portion that lets kids distribute their earnings between spending, savings and money for giving.
The parent dashboard lets users set chores up as one-time tasks or on a recurring basis. The app also lets parents decide whether they want to approve the chores themselves, or automatically pay out when their kids mark them as done. And for parents who want to instill a sense of urgency, there’s an option to mark chores as ‘stealable,’ which allows siblings to reap the reward if they get to it first.
Founded in 2016, Chore Check is a recent entrant to the chore management space. But the startup has one major card up its sleeve. A pre-paid debit MasterCard, to be more specific, that kids can use to spend the money they’ve earned.
Vaughan said the idea to create a branded debit card came about after discovering how difficult it was to get a child-friendly card for her own daughter.
“Most kids are transacting with cash, or maybe using mom or dad’s credit card, but Chore Check offers parents a way to get their kids interacting with plastic in a safe way,” she said. “Money goes from the parent’s account onto this card instantly, and it acts kind of like a gift card. It has a balance on it, and when it runs out of money, the transactions are declined.”
The card has no transaction fees, and can be deactivated and re-activated at will to ensure that kids don’t lose their money if they misplace their cards. In addition to chore payments, the card can also be used as a safe way for parents to transfer money to teens when they go shopping or head to the movies with friends.
Vaughan said a kid-friendly debit card is a great tool for establishing good habits, showing kids that a card is not a blank check for spending money they don’t have. Personally, she learned that lesson the hard way after college.
Providing a kid with their own payment card is also a way to reward them with a sense of empowerment for acting responsibly, she said.
As the mother of a nine-year-old daughter, Vaughan said she founded Chore Check because she was looking for a way to encourage her own child to take more responsibility around the house. Looking at the range of available apps out there, she found many that used gamification as a positive reinforcement, but none that combined chore assignment with financial education.
“I wanted to come at this from a mom’s perspective,” said Vaughan. “On the finance side, there are apps that teach kids to invest, or that teach kids to manage money, which is important. But as a mom, I also really wanted to end the nagging. You just want your kids to do what they were supposed to do without asking a hundred times.”
Chore Check has six employees. The company is currently bootstrapped, and with the launch of the payment service, Vaughan hopes to reach profitability by the end of the year.
Images via Chore Check.
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