My Story

I wanted my kids to manage their own money, albeit with some guidance from me. I hated the idea that I should play dictator and decide whether they could buy the smallest thing based on my whims. Plus, I had family members giving them cash for their birthdays - how was I supposed to keep track of it?

At first I used a spreadsheet, but it was a hassle to update, and hard for my kids to understand. Eventually I found an app for it (Rooster Money), but it was bought by UK bank NatWest and then restricted to the UK App Store. So when someone in our family got a new phone, they wouldn't be able to install RoosterMoney.

The thought of going back to a spreadsheet was unbearable. A few weeks later I was stuck at an equally unbearable conference in Las Vegas, so I went up to my room and started coding an app to solve my problem 🙂.

Bomad is different from other apps in the category. Other apps center on chores. They are basically checklists with rewards attached. Bomad is focused on financial literacy. I believe kids learn best by doing. When kids have their own money and make decisions with age-appropriate support, learning happens naturally.

A fun aside: I’ve also tried to educate my kids on how money and the economy works. Back when they were quite young, I did a fun experiment: I printed some “Dad bucks” and handed them out, claiming they were very valuable. My kids believed me. If I wanted them to tidy their rooms, etc, I would offer to pay them a few Dad bucks and they would do it.

This worked for a while, but then they started wanting to redeem their Dad bucks for real goods and services. I would deflect such requests, but eventually they saw through the charade: Dad can just keep printing these Dad bucks at no cost, and getting us to do real work for them. They figured out that Dad bucks had no real value. The scam was up 🙂

This is kind of what governments do too, and it's properly explained in the excellent kids book The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island