Leave a Review BusyKid
We love busy kid!
We love Busy Kid. My son is 7 and until busy kid we struggled to get him motivated and on task with chores. He’s a little to young to really understand how a bank account works and it’s a big responsibility. We have one that we manage for him but definitely wouldn’t trust him w/a debit card to all that money tied to a bank with concerns of over drafting etc. So this is a perfect happy medium. He can see his hard earned money come through on pay day and he can decide how that many will be split between savings, charity, and spending. Then when he wants something he can load his card and is ready to make his own purchase with his very own debit card. It gives him some control and independence and motivation and risk free.
As parents we feel this has worked better than anything. From a parent’s standpoint, it’s easy to set up and use. We approve the chores and set the rates. And we don’t have to worry about having cash on hand, giving cash and risk the 7yr old losing it. So it’s a win win system all aroundShow lessCathy Savin
An attempted integration of other services
I sure hope busykid intends to do more with this app, I am hopeful it will grow and improve. However, today it is a pretty poor integration of other external services including a separate bank, a separate stock portfolio and a separate site for making donations. This gives a false impression they are integrated when really stocks and donations just send you to another link and tell you to do it yourself on an external site. Quite annoying. I can do that myself and could have chosen more favorable banks or services to do that. It would be better if they didn't attempt to mask this false integration.
If you use it for tracking chores and giving allowances each week, well, that is great and where this app is best.
The current one star review I will tie explicitly to the fact that you can’t load the debit card or make any changes to it while you have an active transfer going on. And seeing as the allowance payouts are every week, and the bank transfers take five days, sometimes more, you are affectively never able to load or use the card within the app. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to load the debit card it came with unless i disable the payouts for some period of time.Show lessjsmacossfc
Developer Response
Thank you for the feedback! Can you please contact me directly at mpru@busykid.com so I can get your name or email in order to review the account. I'm at a disadvantage to explain what's taking place without doing so. Yes we have changes coming to the platform very soon that will provide the integration you are wanting. I want your overall experience to be 5-star worthy, and though it looks like I have a long climb ahead of me, I'm certain I can make i better that the current rating. Please give me the chance! Sincerely - Mike Prusinski, PresidentOur family loves this app!
This app is amazing! It does everything we need it to and more. We set chores for each day and the kiddos get paid for the work they actually do! Payday is each Friday and it’s a breeze. The app calculates how much each child has earned that week and I just have to click “Pay”!
I love how their “paycheck” is divided into the three categories of Share, Save, and Spend - teaching them good money habits! Don’t worry, the percentage for each category is easily customizable by the parent.
One thing that may trip up some people is that you have to load the debit card with funds from one of the categories (from the app) for it to work. I love this feature because my kids lose things ALL THE TIME and we don’t have to worry about them losing all their money if they lose their card. My kids have used their own cards on video game platforms to purchase games and v-bucks which saves me time!!
We didn’t have any issues with setup, linking accounts, or using the debit cards. The debit cards do take 7-10 BUSINESS days to receive, but you are told this when ordered.Show lessI heart Chipotle!
Busy kids and great customer service…
I was initially on the fence about this company. I loved the idea of it but I had some difficulty setting everything up. I was able to get in touch with them by email, even though I’m a little old-school and prefer a phone call when dealing with money stuff. Their responses were always positive and they help me work through all of my complaints and issues. This is a great concept. I realize that this is for kids and teaching them how to use money, however, my family uses them for side hustle businesses as well. It allows us to keep our side hustle money away from our normal account so we don’t accidentally spend it. I had one major issue and got a response from the President of the company himself. Wow I was impressed! My advice would be to give it a shot and use their customer service for any help issues you need.Show lessTHEPOWERSFAMILY
Developer Response
Thank you so much for the kind words and 5 stars! It was a pleasure helping you and please let us know if you ever have other questions or concerns. - Sincerely, Mike Prusinski, PresidentGreat concept but not very effective
I opened an account few months ago. Thought it was a great idea and I was excited that my kids can invest or donate by themselves. 1. Set up an regular allowance- worked great. I moved fund regularly to kids Busy debit cards. 2. Stock- there is a third party so you can’t purchase the stock right away until you open and download another stock broker account. So money from two kids’ accounts are sitting in between Busykid and the stock broker. Requested refund ( I didn’t want to open an another stock app) on 4/23, a month ago. After two multiple emails with company, kids’ money is still sitting there and not refunded. 3. For no reasons, my kids debit cards were declined at Target and Barnes and Noble. ( cards had enough fund) Sent an email. No reply. 4. Finally requested closing accounts and all the money refund. They refunded the amount that’s on BusyKid but not from stock or debit cards. ( for debit cards, you have to call another third party and move the money to Busykid and request again ) All in all, when you want to close the account for any reason, it is extremely hard to get money back between all the third parties they are using and customer service is not very responsive all the time. I really don’t want to recommend this app.Show lesstwokidsmoms
Developer Response
I'm very sorry for the experience you had and I would like to review the account to see why these things happened and refund any money coming to you. Please contact me at mpru@busykid.com as soon as possible. Sincerely - Mike Prusinski, PresidentAwful
The app and the company is NOT user-friendly… My kiddo lost her card and it took over six weeks to get a replacement… I even had to re-order another replacement when it seemed like the original order for the replacement card never processed correctly. When the replacement arrived we couldn’t get the app to load money onto the new card. Called customer service and they had difficulty understanding the situation. Said the new card was no good/didn’t show up in their system. The only thing they could suggest was to call back during business hours. Still haven’t resolved the issue. No refunds are offered/returned to my funding source. They said the only way to get to the money in the app was to spend it…which we would be happy to do with a card that worked. So far I’ve been charged for three cards that do not work and my child’s allowance money is stuck in their crappy app account. Do yourself a favor and pay your kid in cash…STEER CLEAR OF THIS CARD APP!Show lessBusyMomUpsetKid
Rating
Busy kids app is a really good app for kids and moms who don’t get along very well..After using this app for about 3 months I gained more experience..My cousin told me about this app and me snd my sister had to try it out… We don’t usually do chores but after this app we started doing chores…The reason I gave it a 4 and not a 5 is because I tried to purchase something on toca boca but my card got declined and I got a 50 cent fee…I think that needs to be removed…I had 80 and after my card not getting accepted so much I only have $10 now this really needs to get fixed as soon as you can! Also I messed the busy kid email and they responded the same day!!!Thank tells me that there are always open and always reply!! I really love that so much keep up the good work busy kids!!!Show lessmicheele parker
Very Disappointed!!
Would be ZERO stars if it would let me. Loaded $5 on each child’s card before activation, like recommended. Activated the card through the app. Card symbol on app went from ‘locked’ to showing last 4 digits of the card. I then loaded $2 on one of the cards using ’Load Card’ button. The money in the ‘Spend’ account vanished but did not load on the card. Customer service tried reactivating the card still no money in either the spend account or on the card. Then they asked if the money was withdrawn from my bank account. Well DUH!! How else would the money get on the cards?? Customer service then said it must be an app issue and wanted to give me an email address to send my issue. WHY should I have to wait for someone to view an email??!! My money disappeared with a click of a button. They said there’s a phone number but no call center so I’d have to leave a message a wait for them to return my call. Again still no resolution to my issue! The kids worked hard to have money and their own debit cards. We are all very disappointed.Show lessT-Town Dragon
Developer Response
Please contact me (mpru@busykid.com) as soon as possible so I can review your account and communication with our support team. I want you experience to be great and I may be able to shine a light on solutions. Thanks - Mike Prusinski, PresidentVery Disappointing
I thought this app would be perfect for our family, as I was looking for ways to track extra chores my kids could choose to complete for additional $. However, there is no way to enter optional chores that one child could choose to do and everyone could see it was done. For example, I offered extra $ for cleaning the toilet and assigned to each child (which you have to do). My daughter completed it and checked off completed, but it didn’t appear as completed on my son’s list so he literally cleaned the same toilet an hour later! I tried an option of creating a 3rd child account for “whoever does it first”, and neither child has access to it. The app is also having difficulties connecting to my bank, and using a credit card charges a fee for each transaction. Overall if you have one child this may be great, but it doesn’t work for us.Show lessJP - Mom of 2
Rotating chores
Love how the app helps us teach our kids about financial responsibility. The ability to match their savings has helped them think about long term planning, and the conversation regarding budgeting and charitable giving was very positive.
What would make this app better and easier to manage would be more options regarding chore scheduling. With multiple kids, we try to rotate the chores to teach them the responsibility and effort of different jobs. We would love the ability to rotate chores between kids, assign which kid is scheduled to do the chore first, how repetitive the chore is, and how often to rotate the chore (every day, every week, every specific number of weeks). It would also help to have the ability to allow extra days to complete the chore, and to have the choice for chores to be completed over multiple days with the payout being at the end of the multiple days and not just each day.
Really appreciate the goal of this app! Hoping the chore management/scheduling improves for our family’s needs.Show lessFrenchC84
Developer Response
Thank you for the feedback! We love to hear what we can do to make our app fit the needs of the many different families we have using it. The chores area is one where it's difficult to match all families since every parent wants something to fit how they parent. Still, we do our best to incorporate the suggestions we receive. This year we have big plans for just about every aspect of BusyKid, including chores. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Sincerely - Mike Prusinski, President
