July 18, 2025 • 18 mins
Talking about money with kids can feel intimidating — but it doesn’t have to be. In episode #1302, Dr Justin Coulson is joined by Yish Koh, Managing Director of Kit, to unpack practical, simple ways parents can raise kids who are confident and smart with money. From avoiding the ‘tap trap’ to setting stretch goals, you’ll learn how your own money mindset shapes theirs — and the small, powerful lessons that stick for life.
KEY POINTS:
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Why attitude about money matters more than aptitude — and how parents can model healthy habits.
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The danger of passing on economic anxiety to kids.
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How to teach kids to delay gratification and set meaningful goals.
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Creative ways to incentivise saving, including ‘stretch goals’ with bonuses.
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Why teaching kids about time and compound interest is a game-changer.
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Cash vs. digital money: helping kids grasp the value of invisible dollars.
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The best tools and apps to make financial education engaging and real for kids.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"If I almost spent $15 on a game just to feel good—and I have a PhD in psychology—imagine how hard it is for our kids to resist."
— Dr Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Kit Pocket Money App by CommBank
- Free Download: Kit's Smart Money Playbook
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Start the conversation: Make money a regular topic at home — no shame, no secrecy.
- Model what you want to see: Explain your own decisions, from saving to spending.
- Teach delayed gratification: Use food or small purchases to illustrate.
- Set savings goals with your kids — and add stretch goals with incentives.
- Open a savings account or use a money app to help kids track and celebrate progress.
- Don’t forget about cash: Occasionally let them pay in notes or coins to connect the dots.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're looking for ways to encourage your kids to
learn about saving and smart spending, check out Kit, a
pocket money app and card built by Combank. It teaches
kids about earning money through chores and saving in buckets
or what Kit calls stacks. Kit is free for eligible
Combank Yellow customers, t's and C supply, or just fifty
(00:23):
dollars a year for up to five children. Download the
app or visit haykit dot com dot Au. You can
also download kits free pocket Money one oh one guide
from the kit website at Heykit dot com dot Au
TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate for you.
The last couple of weekends, we've had some really fascinating
(00:44):
conversations about kids money, pocket money, delayed gratification, and how
to help children to understand things like interest and spending
and all those kinds of things. Today, one more discussion
that I think is going to be really really fascinating
for you. If you have a child of Internet age
where they want to get online and spend roebucks, or
they want to buy stuff online, they can't help it
(01:07):
with TEAMU all that sort of stuff. That's our conversation today.
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every day.
It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is doctor
Justin Coulson and once again today joined by Ishko, Managing
director of Kit, a pocket money app for kids teaching
kids about money. Thanks so much for being with me again.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thanks for having me again, Justin.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So let's kick on straight away. I want to talk
about kids and what's going on in their online lives.
Increasingly people have figured out how to monetize the online world,
and our children are all too often victims of that.
It's pretty common for kids to be spending money in
online games. Sometimes they realize it. Sometimes they don't talk
to me a bit about what's going on with kids
(01:49):
in the online gaming world when it comes to either
their cash or your credit card.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I think the thing about online games and spending and
online games is that it's really easy and with all
that spending happening digitally, you know, the kids are immersed
in the game and they just want to keep going,
or they want to play with and connect with their friends,
and if they just continue to click buy, it's really
easy for them to lose track of what they're spending.
Particularly in online gates, you've got these micro transactions where
(02:16):
it might be two dollars here, three dollars there, and
before you know it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They've spent one hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So what's really important to help your kid with their
online spending, firstly, is just to make it really visible.
So if your child's got their own payment method where
you can separate it out from your own credit card
that's paying for these things, that's great because if they
run out of money, they've got no more money, and
they will very quickly realize that when those transactions get declined.
(02:41):
I know the one We did a survey a little
while ago and show the one and two parents so
that their kids had spent money on their credit card
without their parents' permission.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So it's very common.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
So you're not a poor parent if this happens to you,
it happens to many people. The other thing you can
do is try and make a link between in game
currency and real life. So what these online games tend
to do is try to obscure the relationship between real
money and what's happening in the game.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So you know, you're spending.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Eight dollars fifty and you get five hundred robucks, Like,
it's really easy to say five hundred here, a thousand
there and then just completely lose track of what that
actually means in dollar rounds. So bring it up to
your kid and say, you know, in the last couple
of weeks, this is what you've spent. Now, how do
you feel about that? And what could we have bought
with that money if it was in the real world,
Just to get them to have a think about that
(03:34):
value and whether they feel like they're getting value for money.
The other thing that you can talk to them about
is online games are really sophisticated advertising machines and it's
not necessarily the fault of kids.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So things like flash sales and.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
You know that false sense of urgency of oh, we've
got fifty percent off on this today, you need to
do this in the next day. Getting your kids to
realize that some of these things may make them feel
like they need to act on it right away, but
it's actually a technique for the game to try and
get more money out of you. So helping them realize
that and then if all else fails.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Frontal controls, Yeah, yeah, I want to talk a bit
more about the insidious nature of the marketing and getting
caught up in the game. So I'm not a gamer.
I haven't played games for a long, long time. Last year, though,
we went on an overseas trip and I thought, I'm
going to be sitting around in airport's a lot. There's
only so much reading I'm willing to do. And if
I've got a fourteen hour flight, I'm not going to
(04:28):
read for fourteen hours. I might download a game just
to I don't know, play on the phone and do
a bit of that. And I found that if I
was sitting in an airport for a layover or whatever,
it was just it became really easy to pull the
game out. But I started to care about the game
a lot. I mean, you know what I do for
a living. I talked to parents about how to make
sure that the kids don't get captured by games in
(04:50):
this sort of scenario, but I found myself falling prey
to it. I didn't actually spend the money, but almost
a couple times there was this there's the value pack.
You get all of these special skills, and you get
all of this extra coinage, and you get all this
like it's a big value pack and it's only fourteen
ninety nine, and I just knew if I bought the
Value Pack, I'd be able to accelerate through at least
(05:11):
twenty or thirty more levels really really fast, and I'd
feel so good about my life because and I remember
thinking to myself as I pulled away from the buy
now button and thought, what am I doing? Like as
if I care that much that I want to spend
fifteen bucks on this stupid game. I remember thinking to myself,
it almost got me. And I've got the PhD in psychology,
(05:33):
I'm nearly fifty years old. It must be so tough
for kids when they're playing these games. All they're friends
playing these games. They want to level up. They know
their friends are on this other level. They can't quite
get there, And for the nine ninety nine or the
four ninety nine or the forty nine ninety nine, they
can have this skin, or they can have this weapon,
they can have this goal, or they can have this
power boost or whatever it is, and suddenly they're where
(05:53):
all their friends are. That's got to feel really, really good,
because there's so much status associated with how you play
the game.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yes, totally spot on, And I think what's even more
insidious about some games. On top of these sort of
advertising techniques, there's also the fact that these platforms are open.
So if you think about Roadblocks and you know you
can actually make money on Roadblocks by designing games, But
at the same time, you have strangers who we're talking
to your kids and saying you can make why don't
(06:22):
you come and work for me. We can make lots
of money, And suddenly you're in a totally unregulated employment
market with people you may not know. So there really
is not very much in the way of knowing that
the user as a child and putting the right sort
of safety mechanisms around it. So I think justin I
think you getting sucked into the game is totally the
way for parents to really understand exactly what kids are
(06:45):
experiencing and how it makes you feel.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Just to be clear, they didn't get me. I was
able to resist, I was able to.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Expand, but PhD came in handy.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I guess it was tempting for a minute there. While
you're on this idea of earning money online. First of all,
I reckon what you've just said about how kids can
make money on Roadblocks and on other games. They can
stream on Twitch and they've got their YouTube channels and
all that sort of stuff. Obviously, you've got to work really, really,
really hard to make any decent money, but there are
some kids that are out there making some genuine money
(07:13):
by what they're doing online. Can you talk a bit
more about both the ways that children are earning money
online and what parents need to know about it outside
of the safety issues that you've just described.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
We don't want to.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Say the digital world is all bad, because one of
the benefits of the digital world is that there are
lots of new ways that kids can earn money online.
Now we know that there are children who make their
own asser crafts like Bracelet's Haven Bracelet's personalized items that
they can then sell on eBay or at sea. You
mentioned before, if your kids are thirteen plus and with
(07:49):
the right parental supervision, they can stream on Twitch or
create YouTube channels. All of them need a certain number
of subscribers to be able to monetize and earn money
from it. The most important thing that parents need to
know about this firstly is that if your kids are
going into these things, firstly, what are the legal and
(08:09):
state based kind of rules around this.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So typically there is either.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
A requirement for your child to be a certain age
or that you as a parent need to manage the
account or supervise them. Secondly, if your child is selling things,
and I know the social media ban will be coming
in later this year, but if they are, if you are,
for example, facilitating sales on Facebook, Marketplace or things like that,
to be really careful of who you're speaking to, and
(08:34):
always for selling things in person, to do that safely
and never share your personal information with other people. And
then finally have to think about if their primary motivation
is money. So it could be that they just love
doing it and they want to make money, and that's
totally fine if they want to spend their time doing that,
but if they're going into this saying I want to
(08:55):
make more money so that I can save up to
buy something that I want, help them realize how much
time they're spending on it.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
If it's not something that they love.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
To do intrinsically and they're spending lots of time and
not making lots of money, it's definitely worth having that
conversation around what are the other options? Because I see
kids that do bake sales and they do extremely well
baked sales just sort of down the corner from where
I live.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I've got a daughter who loves the baked sale,
and we've sat down with her and done the mats, like, Okay,
it costs this much for the flour and for the
cake mix and for the chocolate chips and all this
sort of stuff, and we've done this many hours of
baking and cooking and whatever else. And this is how
much money we've had with revenue. But once you take
the costs away from the revenue, here's how much you
actually made. Here's so many hours you work. We work
(09:37):
it out at an hourly rate, and start to have
the conversations around is this a good way for you
to earn money or would you be better off just
mowing my lawn and getting twenty bucks? And the kids
are like hmm. You can see the way they start
to think about it. Clearly, the opportunity for scale online
is amazing, which is why so many kids want to
do it, and they love the status that comes with it.
Some research shows that kids want to be influencers more
(09:58):
than they want to be movie stars these because the
influencers have more followers and get more status, which I
find fascinating it can be helpful for kids to learn
the basics of how finances work, especially in this digital
age of invisible money. Kit is a pocket money app
(10:20):
and card built by Combank. It helps kids learn about
money through earning, saving, and spending pocket money, as well
as by playing fun games and quizzes. Kit is free
for eligible Combank Yellow customers, t's and C supply, or
just fifty dollars a year for up to five children.
Download the app or visit heykit dot com dot a U.
(10:42):
You can also download Kit's free pocket Money one O
one guide from the Kit website at Heykit dot com
dot AU TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate
for you. I don't know if this is one that
you can answer or not, but I'm really curious about
AI becoming more sophisticated and making scam realistic. Are you
seeing anything in terms of scams and kids being online?
(11:05):
A kid's getting done here.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
So you might think that all people are the most
vulnerable to scams, but actually the largest coport of people
who fall victims to scan tend to the younger people
because their entire lives and a lot of the purchasing
that they do happens online. What we see with some
kid kids when it comes to those who fall for scams,
it tends to be either they're purchasing from merchants who.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Don't deliver the product, or deliver one that's inferior.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
And often you know fake shops that get set up
really quickly with AI now and they can either be
copying a legitimate brand or they might be creating something
that looks like a legitimate store and advertise themselves on
social media online and it just ends up being completely fake.
The second thing we see is that there's often competitions
or promises for free robucks. For example, if you just
(11:56):
fill out this survey or fill out this competition, just
your credit card details here to enter. AI makes it
really easy for these scams to look realistic and make
it hard the kids to realize that it's fake.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So the golden rule that I always say, if you
don't listen to.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Anything else, the golden rule is if it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is. If someone's giving
you free roebucks, before you share your info, ask why
do they want that info? So when buying online, I
always say check if it's a legitimate merchant. So look
at the domain name, for example, is that the actual
same website as the merchant that it says it's going
(12:38):
to be if you haven't purchased from it, if you've
never heard of a brand before, be really careful, and
you know, always keep that door open to get your
kids to check with you if they feel that something's
not quite right or they think that's not quite right,
Just have that conversation so that you as the adult,
can help us that out as well, because it's hard
for adults too. Some of the scams, because they're impersonating
(13:00):
really well known companies, it can really look legitimate and
look like the actual company.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So contact the company directly.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
If you're not sure, but also have a look in
your emails and texts so I know that those scams
around the hey mom scam, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You know, if you get someone online he's impersonating a.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Parent and saying, Hey, I'm mum stuck here and can
you just send me some money. Having something that you've
agreed upfront around you know, maybe it's a password.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
It's like, if it's really me, you could say this
and then you know that you're not being scammed.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It's such a valuable conversation. We've covered so many things
that really matter here. I really appreciate where this has
gone fundamentally. When I look at the online world, I
look at the way it targets all of us, adults,
kids alike, it really feels to me, whether it's Ai
instant Robucks or instant fame or instant whatever, to me,
it's a world of instant gratification. Over the last couple
(13:50):
of weeks, both with you when we spoke two weeks ago,
and also Nicole last week, as we've talked about money skills,
the concept, the construct, the idea of delayed greatify keeps
coming up again and again and again. I feel like
it's really pertinent here as well. When you look at
the most successful savers and you've got access to all
of this data. With what you're doing with the pocket
(14:12):
money up for kids with kid, what do you see
happening when it comes to teaching delayed gratification, Because clearly
there are some kids that are doing it really, really well.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But I say, I will say there's an element of delayed
gratification that comes down to personality. And I know a
lot of parents get really surprised and these I've got
two kids, it's that same family. One kid never spends
any of them money. All they want to do is
just have it sit there and watch it grow and
they're just super proud of it and they won't spend
it ever. And then you have the other kid that's
out just having fun with their friends, spending and getting
(14:44):
it to.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Zero and this money in it.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So there is definitely a genetic element to it, but
there are things that parents can do to improve a
delayed gratification. So if you think about it, it's that
core skill that makes you good at money.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So if you think.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
About saving money, investing money, it's always about foregoing that
thing that's right in front of you and the thing
that you really want right now for a future benefit.
So as a parent, that role modeling is super important.
So what we say as parents ends up becoming that
internal dialogue of our kids. So what do you say
when you're facing temptation? Are you the kind of parent
that's like, hey, treat yourself, or are you not a
(15:20):
parent of hmm, that looks nice. I'm going to think
about it. You know, I don't need to buy that
right now, or I'm okay to wait for a sale.
Secondly saying no and following through. So this is my
tip for preventing nagging, which is if your kids are
nagging you for something and you say no, and then
they nag you some more and eventually you cave and
say yes, that's just saying whenever you want something, we
(15:41):
need to do is continue to nag it you get
the s So following through with what you say you
do really helps. Also, delayed modification isn't a massive concept,
so I call it like a muscle that you can
strengthen over time. So if you can practice, you know,
set your kid up for success. Help them to wait
for small periods of time. So either give them a
(16:02):
regular pocket money cadence where it's weekly, and as they
get used to having to wait a whole week to
get their money, then fortnightly, and then monthly like an adults,
they become sort of older teenagers. They get that muscle
of knowing that money doesn't come whenever they need it,
but they need to wait for it if they've done
their chores and to wait for that payday, and then
they get better at then waiting longer periods of time
(16:24):
and then being able to budget and think about what
they're going to do with that money, and then when.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
All us fails, you can also set control.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
So if you do have that child, for example, that
spends all their money at once, you could say when
you get your pocket money each week, what we're going
to do collaboratively is say we're going to split fifty
percent into a savings account that I'll keep for you,
and then fifty percent that you can spend, so that
way they don't get tempted, they understand the importance of saving,
and you're setting them up for success.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, that's the approach that we've typically taken with our kids.
We help them to set goals, we organize percentages and
do it. Of course, if you can do it automatically,
that makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Ish.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
This has been such a I think such a helpful
and important conversation. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for chatting
with me, Thanks Dosh having me du Justin ish Coo
is the managing director of kit, a pocket money app
for kids teaching kids about money. If you'd like more
information and resources, will link to things in the show
notes for you. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge media. Mim Hammonds provides our admin,
(17:22):
research and other support. And if you'd like more info
and more resources about the things that we've talked about today,
or just about making your family happier, you'll find it
all at Happyfamilies dot com dot au. Kit is a
pocket money app and card built by Combank. Kit helps
(17:42):
kids learn all about money, from earning, saving, and spending
their pocket money through to learning about money by taking
quizzes and playing fun games. It's guilt free screen time
that helps them develop financial confidence. Kit is free for
eligible Combank Yellow customers, tease se supply, or just fifty
dollars a year for up to five children. Download the
(18:04):
app or visit haykit dot com dot a U. You
can also download Kit's free pocket Money one oh one
guide from the kit website at heykit dot com dot
au TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate for
you
If you're looking for ways to encourage your kids to
learn about saving and smart spending, check out Kit, a
pocket money app and card built by Combank. It teaches
kids about earning money through chores and saving in buckets
or what Kit calls stacks. Kit is free for eligible
Combank Yellow customers, t's and C supply, or just fifty
(00:23):
dollars a year for up to five children. Download the
app or visit haykit dot com dot Au. You can
also download kits free pocket Money one oh one guide
from the kit website at Heykit dot com dot Au
TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate for you.
The last couple of weekends, we've had some really fascinating
(00:44):
conversations about kids money, pocket money, delayed gratification, and how
to help children to understand things like interest and spending
and all those kinds of things. Today, one more discussion
that I think is going to be really really fascinating
for you. If you have a child of Internet age
where they want to get online and spend roebucks, or
they want to buy stuff online, they can't help it
(01:07):
with TEAMU all that sort of stuff. That's our conversation today.
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every day.
It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is doctor
Justin Coulson and once again today joined by Ishko, Managing
director of Kit, a pocket money app for kids teaching
kids about money. Thanks so much for being with me again.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thanks for having me again, Justin.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So let's kick on straight away. I want to talk
about kids and what's going on in their online lives.
Increasingly people have figured out how to monetize the online world,
and our children are all too often victims of that.
It's pretty common for kids to be spending money in
online games. Sometimes they realize it. Sometimes they don't talk
to me a bit about what's going on with kids
(01:49):
in the online gaming world when it comes to either
their cash or your credit card.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I think the thing about online games and spending and
online games is that it's really easy and with all
that spending happening digitally, you know, the kids are immersed
in the game and they just want to keep going,
or they want to play with and connect with their friends,
and if they just continue to click buy, it's really
easy for them to lose track of what they're spending.
Particularly in online gates, you've got these micro transactions where
(02:16):
it might be two dollars here, three dollars there, and
before you know it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They've spent one hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So what's really important to help your kid with their
online spending, firstly, is just to make it really visible.
So if your child's got their own payment method where
you can separate it out from your own credit card
that's paying for these things, that's great because if they
run out of money, they've got no more money, and
they will very quickly realize that when those transactions get declined.
(02:41):
I know the one We did a survey a little
while ago and show the one and two parents so
that their kids had spent money on their credit card
without their parents' permission.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So it's very common.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
So you're not a poor parent if this happens to you,
it happens to many people. The other thing you can
do is try and make a link between in game
currency and real life. So what these online games tend
to do is try to obscure the relationship between real
money and what's happening in the game.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So you know, you're spending.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Eight dollars fifty and you get five hundred robucks, Like,
it's really easy to say five hundred here, a thousand
there and then just completely lose track of what that
actually means in dollar rounds. So bring it up to
your kid and say, you know, in the last couple
of weeks, this is what you've spent. Now, how do
you feel about that? And what could we have bought
with that money if it was in the real world,
Just to get them to have a think about that
(03:34):
value and whether they feel like they're getting value for money.
The other thing that you can talk to them about
is online games are really sophisticated advertising machines and it's
not necessarily the fault of kids.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So things like flash sales and.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
You know that false sense of urgency of oh, we've
got fifty percent off on this today, you need to
do this in the next day. Getting your kids to
realize that some of these things may make them feel
like they need to act on it right away, but
it's actually a technique for the game to try and
get more money out of you. So helping them realize
that and then if all else fails.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Frontal controls, Yeah, yeah, I want to talk a bit
more about the insidious nature of the marketing and getting
caught up in the game. So I'm not a gamer.
I haven't played games for a long, long time. Last year, though,
we went on an overseas trip and I thought, I'm
going to be sitting around in airport's a lot. There's
only so much reading I'm willing to do. And if
I've got a fourteen hour flight, I'm not going to
(04:28):
read for fourteen hours. I might download a game just
to I don't know, play on the phone and do
a bit of that. And I found that if I
was sitting in an airport for a layover or whatever,
it was just it became really easy to pull the
game out. But I started to care about the game
a lot. I mean, you know what I do for
a living. I talked to parents about how to make
sure that the kids don't get captured by games in
(04:50):
this sort of scenario, but I found myself falling prey
to it. I didn't actually spend the money, but almost
a couple times there was this there's the value pack.
You get all of these special skills, and you get
all of this extra coinage, and you get all this
like it's a big value pack and it's only fourteen
ninety nine, and I just knew if I bought the
Value Pack, I'd be able to accelerate through at least
(05:11):
twenty or thirty more levels really really fast, and I'd
feel so good about my life because and I remember
thinking to myself as I pulled away from the buy
now button and thought, what am I doing? Like as
if I care that much that I want to spend
fifteen bucks on this stupid game. I remember thinking to myself,
it almost got me. And I've got the PhD in psychology,
(05:33):
I'm nearly fifty years old. It must be so tough
for kids when they're playing these games. All they're friends
playing these games. They want to level up. They know
their friends are on this other level. They can't quite
get there, And for the nine ninety nine or the
four ninety nine or the forty nine ninety nine, they
can have this skin, or they can have this weapon,
they can have this goal, or they can have this
power boost or whatever it is, and suddenly they're where
(05:53):
all their friends are. That's got to feel really, really good,
because there's so much status associated with how you play
the game.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yes, totally spot on, And I think what's even more
insidious about some games. On top of these sort of
advertising techniques, there's also the fact that these platforms are open.
So if you think about Roadblocks and you know you
can actually make money on Roadblocks by designing games, But
at the same time, you have strangers who we're talking
to your kids and saying you can make why don't
(06:22):
you come and work for me. We can make lots
of money, And suddenly you're in a totally unregulated employment
market with people you may not know. So there really
is not very much in the way of knowing that
the user as a child and putting the right sort
of safety mechanisms around it. So I think justin I
think you getting sucked into the game is totally the
way for parents to really understand exactly what kids are
(06:45):
experiencing and how it makes you feel.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Just to be clear, they didn't get me. I was
able to resist, I was able to.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Expand, but PhD came in handy.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I guess it was tempting for a minute there. While
you're on this idea of earning money online. First of all,
I reckon what you've just said about how kids can
make money on Roadblocks and on other games. They can
stream on Twitch and they've got their YouTube channels and
all that sort of stuff. Obviously, you've got to work really, really,
really hard to make any decent money, but there are
some kids that are out there making some genuine money
(07:13):
by what they're doing online. Can you talk a bit
more about both the ways that children are earning money
online and what parents need to know about it outside
of the safety issues that you've just described.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
We don't want to.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Say the digital world is all bad, because one of
the benefits of the digital world is that there are
lots of new ways that kids can earn money online.
Now we know that there are children who make their
own asser crafts like Bracelet's Haven Bracelet's personalized items that
they can then sell on eBay or at sea. You
mentioned before, if your kids are thirteen plus and with
(07:49):
the right parental supervision, they can stream on Twitch or
create YouTube channels. All of them need a certain number
of subscribers to be able to monetize and earn money
from it. The most important thing that parents need to
know about this firstly is that if your kids are
going into these things, firstly, what are the legal and
(08:09):
state based kind of rules around this.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So typically there is either.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
A requirement for your child to be a certain age
or that you as a parent need to manage the
account or supervise them. Secondly, if your child is selling things,
and I know the social media ban will be coming
in later this year, but if they are, if you are,
for example, facilitating sales on Facebook, Marketplace or things like that,
to be really careful of who you're speaking to, and
(08:34):
always for selling things in person, to do that safely
and never share your personal information with other people. And
then finally have to think about if their primary motivation
is money. So it could be that they just love
doing it and they want to make money, and that's
totally fine if they want to spend their time doing that,
but if they're going into this saying I want to
(08:55):
make more money so that I can save up to
buy something that I want, help them realize how much
time they're spending on it.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
If it's not something that they love.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
To do intrinsically and they're spending lots of time and
not making lots of money, it's definitely worth having that
conversation around what are the other options? Because I see
kids that do bake sales and they do extremely well
baked sales just sort of down the corner from where
I live.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I've got a daughter who loves the baked sale,
and we've sat down with her and done the mats, like, Okay,
it costs this much for the flour and for the
cake mix and for the chocolate chips and all this
sort of stuff, and we've done this many hours of
baking and cooking and whatever else. And this is how
much money we've had with revenue. But once you take
the costs away from the revenue, here's how much you
actually made. Here's so many hours you work. We work
(09:37):
it out at an hourly rate, and start to have
the conversations around is this a good way for you
to earn money or would you be better off just
mowing my lawn and getting twenty bucks? And the kids
are like hmm. You can see the way they start
to think about it. Clearly, the opportunity for scale online
is amazing, which is why so many kids want to
do it, and they love the status that comes with it.
Some research shows that kids want to be influencers more
(09:58):
than they want to be movie stars these because the
influencers have more followers and get more status, which I
find fascinating it can be helpful for kids to learn
the basics of how finances work, especially in this digital
age of invisible money. Kit is a pocket money app
(10:20):
and card built by Combank. It helps kids learn about
money through earning, saving, and spending pocket money, as well
as by playing fun games and quizzes. Kit is free
for eligible Combank Yellow customers, t's and C supply, or
just fifty dollars a year for up to five children.
Download the app or visit heykit dot com dot a U.
(10:42):
You can also download Kit's free pocket Money one O
one guide from the Kit website at Heykit dot com
dot AU TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate
for you. I don't know if this is one that
you can answer or not, but I'm really curious about
AI becoming more sophisticated and making scam realistic. Are you
seeing anything in terms of scams and kids being online?
(11:05):
A kid's getting done here.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
So you might think that all people are the most
vulnerable to scams, but actually the largest coport of people
who fall victims to scan tend to the younger people
because their entire lives and a lot of the purchasing
that they do happens online. What we see with some
kid kids when it comes to those who fall for scams,
it tends to be either they're purchasing from merchants who.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Don't deliver the product, or deliver one that's inferior.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
And often you know fake shops that get set up
really quickly with AI now and they can either be
copying a legitimate brand or they might be creating something
that looks like a legitimate store and advertise themselves on
social media online and it just ends up being completely fake.
The second thing we see is that there's often competitions
or promises for free robucks. For example, if you just
(11:56):
fill out this survey or fill out this competition, just
your credit card details here to enter. AI makes it
really easy for these scams to look realistic and make
it hard the kids to realize that it's fake.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So the golden rule that I always say, if you
don't listen to.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Anything else, the golden rule is if it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is. If someone's giving
you free roebucks, before you share your info, ask why
do they want that info? So when buying online, I
always say check if it's a legitimate merchant. So look
at the domain name, for example, is that the actual
same website as the merchant that it says it's going
(12:38):
to be if you haven't purchased from it, if you've
never heard of a brand before, be really careful, and
you know, always keep that door open to get your
kids to check with you if they feel that something's
not quite right or they think that's not quite right,
Just have that conversation so that you as the adult,
can help us that out as well, because it's hard
for adults too. Some of the scams, because they're impersonating
(13:00):
really well known companies, it can really look legitimate and
look like the actual company.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So contact the company directly.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
If you're not sure, but also have a look in
your emails and texts so I know that those scams
around the hey mom scam, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You know, if you get someone online he's impersonating a.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Parent and saying, Hey, I'm mum stuck here and can
you just send me some money. Having something that you've
agreed upfront around you know, maybe it's a password.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
It's like, if it's really me, you could say this
and then you know that you're not being scammed.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It's such a valuable conversation. We've covered so many things
that really matter here. I really appreciate where this has
gone fundamentally. When I look at the online world, I
look at the way it targets all of us, adults,
kids alike, it really feels to me, whether it's Ai
instant Robucks or instant fame or instant whatever, to me,
it's a world of instant gratification. Over the last couple
(13:50):
of weeks, both with you when we spoke two weeks ago,
and also Nicole last week, as we've talked about money skills,
the concept, the construct, the idea of delayed greatify keeps
coming up again and again and again. I feel like
it's really pertinent here as well. When you look at
the most successful savers and you've got access to all
of this data. With what you're doing with the pocket
(14:12):
money up for kids with kid, what do you see
happening when it comes to teaching delayed gratification, Because clearly
there are some kids that are doing it really, really well.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But I say, I will say there's an element of delayed
gratification that comes down to personality. And I know a
lot of parents get really surprised and these I've got
two kids, it's that same family. One kid never spends
any of them money. All they want to do is
just have it sit there and watch it grow and
they're just super proud of it and they won't spend
it ever. And then you have the other kid that's
out just having fun with their friends, spending and getting
(14:44):
it to.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Zero and this money in it.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So there is definitely a genetic element to it, but
there are things that parents can do to improve a
delayed gratification. So if you think about it, it's that
core skill that makes you good at money.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So if you think.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
About saving money, investing money, it's always about foregoing that
thing that's right in front of you and the thing
that you really want right now for a future benefit.
So as a parent, that role modeling is super important.
So what we say as parents ends up becoming that
internal dialogue of our kids. So what do you say
when you're facing temptation? Are you the kind of parent
that's like, hey, treat yourself, or are you not a
(15:20):
parent of hmm, that looks nice. I'm going to think
about it. You know, I don't need to buy that
right now, or I'm okay to wait for a sale.
Secondly saying no and following through. So this is my
tip for preventing nagging, which is if your kids are
nagging you for something and you say no, and then
they nag you some more and eventually you cave and
say yes, that's just saying whenever you want something, we
(15:41):
need to do is continue to nag it you get
the s So following through with what you say you
do really helps. Also, delayed modification isn't a massive concept,
so I call it like a muscle that you can
strengthen over time. So if you can practice, you know,
set your kid up for success. Help them to wait
for small periods of time. So either give them a
(16:02):
regular pocket money cadence where it's weekly, and as they
get used to having to wait a whole week to
get their money, then fortnightly, and then monthly like an adults,
they become sort of older teenagers. They get that muscle
of knowing that money doesn't come whenever they need it,
but they need to wait for it if they've done
their chores and to wait for that payday, and then
they get better at then waiting longer periods of time
(16:24):
and then being able to budget and think about what
they're going to do with that money, and then when.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
All us fails, you can also set control.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
So if you do have that child, for example, that
spends all their money at once, you could say when
you get your pocket money each week, what we're going
to do collaboratively is say we're going to split fifty
percent into a savings account that I'll keep for you,
and then fifty percent that you can spend, so that
way they don't get tempted, they understand the importance of saving,
and you're setting them up for success.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, that's the approach that we've typically taken with our kids.
We help them to set goals, we organize percentages and
do it. Of course, if you can do it automatically,
that makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Ish.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
This has been such a I think such a helpful
and important conversation. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for chatting
with me, Thanks Dosh having me du Justin ish Coo
is the managing director of kit, a pocket money app
for kids teaching kids about money. If you'd like more
information and resources, will link to things in the show
notes for you. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge media. Mim Hammonds provides our admin,
(17:22):
research and other support. And if you'd like more info
and more resources about the things that we've talked about today,
or just about making your family happier, you'll find it
all at Happyfamilies dot com dot au. Kit is a
pocket money app and card built by Combank. Kit helps
(17:42):
kids learn all about money, from earning, saving, and spending
their pocket money through to learning about money by taking
quizzes and playing fun games. It's guilt free screen time
that helps them develop financial confidence. Kit is free for
eligible Combank Yellow customers, tease se supply, or just fifty
dollars a year for up to five children. Download the
(18:04):
app or visit haykit dot com dot a U. You
can also download Kit's free pocket Money one oh one
guide from the kit website at heykit dot com dot
au TMD available on the website. Consider it appropriate for
you
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