High Interest | Kids Savings | Online Finance Software

One important step in making a leap ahead in terms of managing your finances is linking your local savings account to your online savings account. The reason you have two accounts is because your local bank serves as an emergency reserve of cash to pay bills or to cover checks.

Your online savings bank pays a higher rate of interest and holds the remainder of your reserve cash (learn how to manage and build up a reserve cash savings account). By now you have established online banking relationships for each of your children and they've learned the importance and usefulness of managing money. Now it's time to learn and then teach the skills they need to handle all the responsibilities of their own accounts.

Software products like Microsoft Money and Intuit's Quicken revolutionized our ability to track and manage personal finances. Complicated accounts, investment portfolios, loans and revolving bills are all tracked with ease by the major software packages. Are you using them to manage your finances?

If not, pick up a copy of whichever program you're comfortable with. I have been using Quicken since about 1991 when I had my first PC. I won't pretend to make judgements or assessments about Microsoft Money, as I have only used it cursorily over the last two decades. You can find these on my recommended products list at kidssavingsaccount.info

Quicken links your computer home financial accounting directly to your bank, savings bank, credit card provider, and most (but not all) investment companies. Microsoft Money works similarly. Once you establish online usernames and passwords with each of your accounts, you can teach Quicken to download all your transactions for your review. Paying attention to the multitude of accounts at your disposal can be a huge burden.

Learning to operate software to do the heavy lifting (gathering transactions and doing the math) may not be essential for you, but it is a MUST for your children. Get the software and start learning as much as you can today.