Greenlight

Greenlight is a banking app and associated bank account that gives children and young adults hands-on experience saving, spending, earning, and donating money—with supervision. It's also a pleasure to use. Its educational content is lively and fun. Greenlight doesn’t compete head-to-head with apps that adults use for budgeting and managing personal finances. There, our Editors' Choice winners are Simplifi, which we recommend to most people, Quicken Classic, which is best for those who want to micro manage their finances, and YNAB for anyone who needs a fresh approach to budgeting. That said, Greenlight is a different type of app and it's wonderful at giving kids experience managing real money.

How Much Does Greenlight Cost?

Greenlight is essentially a banking app and account with very specialized education and family safety features. The company provides debit cards for up to five children and young adults (recommended for ages 8 to 22) and credit cards for parents—more on that later. 

There are three pricing plans built around these cards and apps that kick in after a one-month free trial. Greenlight Core ($4.99 per month) returns 1% interest on its savings account. Greenlight Max ($9.98 per month) rewards savers with 2% interest and adds investing tools for kids, more advanced investing for the supervising grownup, priority support, and a protection plan that covers identity theft, purchases, and your phone (provided by Virginia Surety Company, Inc.; mobile phone protection not available to residents of New York). Greenlight Infinity ($14.98 per month) ups the interest on savings to 5% and adds numerous family safety features.

Every tier of service comes with core financial tools and strong parental controls, as well as educational apps. 

As a point of comparison, GoHenry is a similar app and banking service, but you don't get as much value from it. GoHenry charges the same amount for its lowest tier of service ($4.99 per month), but it's only good for one child, whereas Greenlight is good for five. With GoHenry, you have to pay nearly double ($9.89 per month) to support more child accounts, up to four. While the two are quite similar, Greenlight scores higher in our testing.

How Do Greenlight's Bank Cards Work?

When you sign up for a Greenlight account, you get a debit card issued by Community Federal Savings Bank, member FDIC. Kids can use the debit card to make purchases, with adult supervision, and earn 1% cash back, which goes directly to their savings account. 

Adults can get a World Mastercard credit card that offers 3% cash back on purchases. They can add teenage children as authorized users to help them start building a credit score early. Debit cards are sent automatically and quickly. For $9.99, kids can get a custom card with an approved image on it.

Getting Started With Greenlight

Greenlight walks the account supervisor (usually a parent) through the account setup, which requires some basic information about your family. You have to connect to another bank account so you can move real money into your Greenlight account and into the children's accounts. You also need to invite your kids to download the app and sign up. 

Transferred funds are stored in a Parent Wallet. The parent or account supervisor can move money from the Parent Wallet into the children’s accounts so they can access it.

Managing Money With Your Kids

On the child's end, the app shows the amount of money available in the account currently. It also explains any restrictions the parent has put on how they can spend it. For example, you might give a child $25 and limit them to spending it only at one particular store or on one particular category, such as restaurants. Greenlight includes pre-populated lists of stores and categories to make it easy to find what you’re looking for. You can also give children an amount of money with no limitations called Spend Anywhere.

Using the app, kids can request funds from the adult account supervisor. Adults can also offer money for specific purposes or as an allowance, which can be automated or conditional. For example, you can assign chores, such as cleaning your bedroom and taking care of the family pet, with a deadline and frequency. The app has some suggested chores, and grownups can enter custom ones. Kids can split up their earned money by accepting the suggested allocation (70% to Spend Anywhere, 20% to General Savings, 5% to Giving, and 5% in Cash to Invest) or modifying it.

Teens who have jobs can have their paychecks deposited directly into their Greenlight account.

(Credit: Greenlight/PCMag)

Greenlight lets you, the parent, set up an automated transfer from your other bank account any time funds in the Parent Wallet are low. You can also turn on notifications for events like purchases made with the family debit card and a child’s request for money. Adults can disable a child's debit card at any time from the app. If a child loses their card, Greenlight charges a small fee to replace it.

Because Greenlight documents the movement of funds so well, both adults and kids have a history of where money came from as well as how and where it was spent. Another benefit is that once they're armed with a debit card, kids don't have to carry cash. 

Growing a Savings Account With Greenlight

As mentioned, children earn interest on their savings, either through General Savings or Savings Goals that they set up for themselves. They can also choose to round up to the next dollar on debit card purchases and have the change automatically deposited in their savings accounts. Optionally, grownups can pay additional interest on the kids' savings by setting up an APY from 1% to 100% that’s automatically transferred from the Parent Wallet (the funding account).

All these tools make it easy for adults to manage the account to a fine degree. 

Investing With Supervision

Both parents and teens can learn about investing and make trades, though children must get approval. Trades are executed through DriveWealth. Parents go through a Q&A, allowing Greenlight to learn about variables like their investing goals and style. Fractional shares are allowed, so you can invest as little as $1. 

Parents and kids can choose from more than 4,000 stocks and exchange-traded funds and read insights from experts at Morningstar. There’s also a recommended ETF based on the investment profile the parent completed.

(Credit: Greenlight/PCMag)

Greenlight provides a brief but detailed overview of each stock and ETF, including last price, market cap, Morningstar rating, Fair value, and a cool feature called Investor Insights that summarizes what bullish and bearish investors have to say about the security. I like this compact but informative summary for individuals who probably aren’t investing large sums or day trading.   

Successful investing involves some sophisticated thought and perhaps more knowledge of the financial world than teens have. Still, if it jump-starts their interest in investing for when they grow older and have more money, it can be a good thing to introduce them to the basics.

Learning With Greenlight 

(Credit: Greenlight/PCMag)

Since my last review of Greenlight, the app has doubled the amount of financial literacy content it has. An educational game called Level Up is a series of short animated videos that teach young people about the fundamentals of spending, investing, giving, and saving. New videos and quizzes cover concepts like budgeting, insurance, and identity theft. 

After each video, kids answer a few questions about what they learned to move up to the next level. Level Up’s graphics and explanations of financial topics are exceptional. Though the subject is treated seriously, the tone is light-hearted and fun. I liked watching the videos and taking the tests myself.

The company also has materials for teaching in a classroom setting, specifically, an interactive, web-based financial literacy library for grades K–12 that comes with a teacher’s guide.

Greenlight’s Advanced Features

Greenlight Infinity, the priciest level of the app, adds more sophisticated features, most of which have to do with family safety. 

New since my last review are driving safety tools designed for families to help teens become more confident—and hopefully better—drivers. Driving scores, reports, and real-time alerts are now included, as well as a personalized summary of each trip that provides insights for both parents and teens.

These tools join Greenlight Infinity’s existing family safety features, including:

• Experian identity theft monitoring
• Crash detection, where emergency contacts and 911 are notified if your phone detects a possible major collision
• SOS alerts to notify chosen contacts and 911 of your location if you feel unsafe
• Family location sharing

Is Greenlight Safe to Use?

Greenlight accounts are FDIC-insured and adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. All communications between the Greenlight app and the company’s servers use state-of-the-art TLS encryption, and accounts are protected with multi-factor authentication. You can also use biometrics, like Face ID, to access the app as an added security measure.

Greenlight blocks what it calls "unsafe spending categories," sends real-time transaction notifications, and gives adults flexible ATM and spending controls. The company’s support team is available 24/7 via email, text, and phone.

Other Personal Finance Apps for Kids

Greenlight isn't the only app that gives children hands-on experience with personal finance. BusyKid is the closest, as it also has investing tools. It’s less expensive but lacks some of Greenlight’s capabilities, like its safety features. GoHenry and FamZoo are not quite as comprehensive. All cost about the same as Greenlight Core, but none has the exceptional combination of education, hands-on banking experience, and family safety features that Greenlight does.

Verdict: A Good Investment

For parents who want to help coach kids on money matters, Greenlight is one of the better options available. The app effectively combines personal finance education, hands-on experience with money, and family safety features. It doesn’t have much of a learning curve because of its skillful design—and it's even fun to use. If you're an adult looking for a thorough personal finance app of your own, however, try Editors' Choice winners Simplifi or Quicken Classic. Read our head-to-head comparison of the two if you're unsure which one is better for you. We also recommend Editors' Choice winner YNAB to anyone who needs a fresh approach to budgeting.