Pocket money and points

Every household already keeps a ledger. It lives in one parent's head, it gets argued about on Saturdays, and the child always remembers a different number.

The family ledger writes it down. Each money event is one signed row, and a person's balance is the sum of their rows.

The pieces

Ledger

every money event for every person, never edited.

Allowance

a regular amount added to a child's balance on payday.

Savings goal

money a person sets aside from their own balance.

Points

a score for chores and habits. Never money.

Rewards shelf

things a grown-up prices in points, which a child can ask to spend points on.

Houses and the House Cup

teams, and the season they compete in.

The ledger#

Each row records what happened, how much, in which currency, who entered it and what caused it: an approved chore, an allowance that ran, money moved into a savings goal, cash handed over.

Most rows start with a chore. When a grown-up presses Approve on a chore's row in Needs your yes (on Home, the family page, and on the wall display), or Approve all beside its count, a chore that pays money adds a row to the child's ledger, and one that pays points adds to their score. A chore with Needs a grown-up's OK turned off pays the same way the moment a child ticks it, and a grown-up's own Done always pays at once. New chores start from the household's setting, Chores need a grown-up's OK in Family settings, which is on until a grown-up turns it off. The reward goes to the person the chore is assigned to, whoever pressed Done: a parent ticking Leo's chore pays Leo. A shared chore pays each person for their own part, and only an unassigned chore pays whoever ticked it. See Family for chores and approvals.

Rows cannot be edited. A correction is a new row going the other way, with a reason on it. That is what makes the ledger worth keeping, because a record anyone can quietly rewrite settles no arguments.

Balances are never added up across currencies. A household that holds money in two shows two balances, instead of a conversion nobody agreed to.

Reading a statement#

Open Pocket money from the family hub (the page itself is headed Allowances). Under Balances & savings, pick a person from the row of faces. Their savings goals come first, then their statement, which splits their money four ways, and Earned minus Paid out minus In goals always equals Still owed:

Earned

everything credited to them, from chores, allowances and bonuses.

Paid out

cash or transfers you have recorded handing over.

In goals

money set aside in their savings goals.

Still owed

what they are owed and have not been given yet.

Margin holds no money and moves none. There are no payment rails and no card. An allowance records what a child is owed. Handing it over is still you, in a kitchen, with a note or a bank transfer.

When you do hand money over, press Record cash handed over on the child's statement and it comes off Still owed. It cannot record more than is owed, because that would turn into the child owing you.

When the number is plain wrong (you counted the jar, a grandparent handed over birthday money, a chore got paid twice), press Correct the balance. Pick add or take off, type the amount and say why. It lands as a new line with your reason on it, and nothing earlier is edited. Only a grown-up sees either button.

Allowances#

Each child has one allowance per workspace. It is paid Weekly, Every 2 weeks or Monthly, on a payday you pick. Not sure what to pay? The allowance by age calculator works out an amount for each child and splits it into spend, save and give.

Ask Margin Intelligence to change an amount and it checks with you first, saying what the allowance is now and what it would become. Nothing changes until you say yes.

Allowances are unconditional. Nothing ties one to whether the chores got done. Linking the two turns every Saturday into a negotiation, and a household that wants to pay for work already has chore rewards.

On payday#

With Add to balance on payday switched on, a daily job adds the amount on payday without anyone opening the app, and the statement notes it as added automatically. With it off, nothing happens until someone taps Add to balance. Each allowance says which way it pays. One paid by hand shows how many paydays are waiting to be added, never a red overdue count, and offers Switch to automatic. Switching starts from the next payday, so nothing you already paid by hand is added again. The wall shows the same line.

Spend, Save and Give#

Each child's allowance can split every payday three ways. Set what share goes to Save and to Give; Spend gets the rest. Every payday from then on splits that way, and the child's balance shows all three jars. Money put toward a savings goal comes out of Save first. Changing the split changes the paydays after it, never the ones already added.

Pausing an allowance stops it adding anything and keeps the schedule. Deleting one leaves everything it already added on the statement.

One pot, shared#

Plenty of households say "the children get 30 a week between them", and that can be set up as it is said.

1. Press Add allowance and choose One pot, shared.
2. Check the children it covers.
3. Choose how it divides: Equal, By percent (shares that add to 100) or Exact (amounts that add up to the pot).
4. Check what each child will get, shown before you save, and save.

The form refuses a split that does not add up, so the pot lands to the cent instead of being rounded somewhere quietly. Each child still gets their own line with their own amount, and that line is what pays on payday. The pot is the rule behind them. A child who already had their own allowance moves into the pot when you check them.

A child with two homes#

When a child lives in two households, each home keeps its own allowance, ledger and points. If you share the child with the other home (on Home→People, see Family), the Pocket money switch on that share lets the other home see this home's allowance setup for the child: the amount, the currency, how often it is paid, when it is next paid and whether it is paused. It is read-only, and it shares nothing else: no balance, no statement, no savings goals and no points. Switch it off and the other home sees none of it.

Savings goals#

A goal has a name, an emoji and a target. Anyone in the household can make one for themselves, children included, and a child stays in charge of their own. Other people's goals are read-only.

• Putting money in moves money that already sits in that person's balance. It cannot create any, and a contribution bigger than the balance is refused.
• Saved money leaves the spendable balance and sits against the goal until it is used.
• When the total reaches the target, the goal is marked achieved and the family feed says so. Nothing pays out on its own: what happens next is a conversation.
• Deleting a goal with money in it gives the money back as a new entry. The contributions that built it stay on the record.

Points#

Points are a score. They are never money and do not convert. A chore pays either money or points, never both. Points can be spent on the rewards shelf, and spending never lowers the score. For which chores to give each age, see the chore chart by age.

Points can be taken away as well as given. A deduction stops at zero, so no child ends up in debt for a score.

Houses and the House Cup#

Houses are teams. Four come ready (Phoenix, Dragon, Griffin and Serpent), each with its own drawn crest, and you can rename them, change their emoji or make your own. People join a house one at a time, by hand, and someone can be in no house at all. Every award and deduction moves the person's total and their house's total together.

Each house carries one of the House Cup's 41 drawn crests. Most are house characters with a joke in the picture, like Pancake Penguins (a penguin with a stack of pancakes), Nap Ninjas, Sock Goblins, Snack Raccoons and Couch Potatoes. The rest are animals, pets and legends: an otter, a fox, a cat, a dog, a goldfish, a phoenix, a dragon, a kraken and more. The picker sorts them into groups with a search box on top. Point at a crest, or hold it on a phone, to see its name.

The crest you pick is the one the house wears everywhere, even when its name says something else: Foxes that picked the otter wear the otter. Without a pick, a house named after a crest ("The Otters", "Nap Ninjas") takes that crest by itself, and a house whose name matches none of them wears a plain shield. Margin Intelligence and other assistants can give a new house a crest by name too. When you make a new house, the form suggests the house characters as starter ideas. Pick one and it fills in the name, the crest and a one-line description, and you can change any of them.

The cup has drawings for its moments too: a fresh tally board when a season starts, the leading house's crest, two shields level on a ladder when the race is close, a calendar and hourglass on the closing day, and a laurel wreath with the winning house's crest inside it in the list of past seasons. Points rows wear a small stamp for a chore, a habit or a bonus.

A grown-up who joins a house earns points for it and is ranked like anyone else. Someone who has not joined a house is listed under the rankings, without a place. A household with no houses ranks everyone with points, as before.

A season is the House Cup. It has a start, an end, and a finish line that is either a date or a points total.

1. The cup closes by itself. The night after its last day, or the night a house passes the points goal, The Margin closes it, stores the final standings and names the winning house.
2. The family's activity says who won ("Fall Cup closed. Otters won, 204 to 183."), Home says it for a week, and Points says "Last time" under the next season.
3. Every surface writes the closing day the same way: "closes Mon, Nov 2", "closes tonight" on the last day, and "closed Nov 2, the winner is named overnight" between the last day and the close.

If the leading house has no points, no winner is recorded, since "nobody won" is an honest result. A grown-up can still close a season early and name the winner, or call it off with no standings and no winner, from the ... menu beside Edit season.

The rewards shelf#

The shelf turns points into things a child actually wants: a movie night, a later bedtime, a trip for ice cream. A grown-up puts each one on the shelf with a price in points, and a child asks for it.

Each person has two numbers, shown side by side:

Score

every point they have earned, less any taken away. Levels, houses and the House Cup read this, and spending never lowers it.

To spend

the score, less the price of every reward a grown-up has said yes to.

So a child who trades sixty points for a movie night keeps their level and their house keeps its standing. Only what is left to spend goes down.

1. A grown-up opens Rewards (from the Points page) and presses Add a reward: a name, a price and a mark.
2. A child presses Ask for it on anything they have enough points for. The price is held while they wait, so the same points cannot be asked for twice, and every grown-up in the household gets a notification.
3. A grown-up says yes or no. A yes checks the balance again and records the spend. Either way, the child is told.

A child can withdraw a request while it waits. Nobody can approve their own request, and a child cannot approve anyone's or change the shelf. A request keeps the price it was asked at, even if a grown-up reprices the reward later. Taking a reward off the shelf keeps its history, and it can be put back.

The shelf is on in every household to start with. A grown-up can switch Let points be spent off on the Rewards page, which hides the shelf from the children and stops new requests. Scores are not affected either way.

Starting fresh#

New school year, a summer off, a sibling who joined late: sometimes the household wants everyone back at zero. Family settings > Reset points and money does it for the whole household or the people you pick, and a person's page has the same button for just them. In the phone app, the same button and Undo last reset are on Who's who (Roles on the family hub), and a person's screen has the button for just them.

Tick what to reset:

• Points. The score goes to 0 and their house total comes down with it.
• Money owed. What they earned and haven't been paid goes to 0.
• Allowance owed. The part of their balance that allowance put there goes to 0. On its own it never adds money and never takes a balance below zero.
• Waiting reward requests. Requests nobody answered are declined, which frees the points they held.
• Streaks. Chore streaks start again from 0. The best streak stays on record.
• House Cup season. The running season ends now, with its standings kept, just as ending it by hand does.

Before anything changes, a confirm card lists each person and exactly what goes to zero for them, with the amounts.

Nothing is deleted. Points and money are zeroed by new entries in the history, each marked "Reset by" with your name and the date, so the ledger and the points history still add up. For 30 seconds after a reset there's an Undo on screen, and Undo last reset in Family settings stays there until the next one. An undo writes the opposite entries and puts streaks, requests and the season back. Only the newest reset can be undone, and a season stays ended if a new one has started since.

Resetting is for a parent or partner in the household, or the workspace owner or an admin. Anyone else, children included, is refused by the server whatever the screen shows.

Availability#

All of this is the family suite, so it needs a Family plan and a family workspace. If the plan ends, every balance and statement stays readable, and the buttons that would change them are switched off. Money owed between adults lives in Expenses and money and is on every plan.