The pocket money tracker for the Bank of Mum and Dad
Stop keeping your kids’ pocket money balances in your head. CapKin tracks pocket money, spending and savings goals for the whole family, with no prepaid card and no monthly fee. The money stays where it already is, and CapKin keeps the score.
- CapKin keeps a running pocket money balance for each of your kids: paid, spent, saved and owed.
- No prepaid card and no monthly fee. The money stays wherever it already lives; CapKin keeps the score.
- Kids log their own spending and every entry waits for your approval.
- Savings goals with a parent-controlled lock turn “I’m saving up” into something that actually happens.
- Free during beta. Works on any phone, in the browser.
Every family already runs a pocket money system
It goes like this. You agree £3 a week. You rarely have £3 in coins on a Saturday, so it rolls over. Granny adds a tenner at half-term. Your daughter lends her brother two pounds, which becomes a diplomatic incident. And somewhere around week six, the family ledger, which is your memory, gives out.
The kids’ version of the ledger, meanwhile, never gives out. Your eight-year-old can recite what you owe them going back to Easter, with interest they’ve invented. You’re not running a pocket money system. You’re running a bank with no records and a very motivated auditor.
Settling who has what is the job of a pocket money tracker. Moving money is a separate job, and CapKin doesn’t do it.
CapKin keeps the books
Set each child’s pocket money once, say £3 every Saturday, and CapKin credits it automatically, week after week. Nothing moves; there’s no card to load and no wallet CapKin holds. The balance is a number the whole family can see, and that visibility is what ends “you never gave me last week’s.”
Granny’s birthday tenner? Log it when it happens, and it’s part of the record. The two pounds borrowed between siblings? Each child has their own balance, so it’s visible whose money went where, and the diplomatic incident ends with a glance at the screen.
When your kid spends, on crisps at the shop, a comic or a top-up for a game, they log it themselves, typed or spoken if you’ve switched voice on for them. Every entry sits as pending until you approve it. Most approvals take two seconds from the sofa. The odd surprising one is exactly the conversation you’d want to have anyway.
Saving up, with the leak fixed
Pocket money savings have one classic failure: the saved money is theoretical right up until it isn’t. The bike fund gets raided for a football card binge, and nobody quite remembers agreeing to that.
In CapKin, a child picks a goal, such as a £25 game or a £60 scooter, and moves pocket money into it whenever they like. Money in a goal can be locked, and locked money only comes out through a request you approve or decline. When they’re about to spend on something small, CapKin gently asks first: spend it, or put it toward the scooter? Their choice, one tap, no lecture built in.
Kids who reach a goal they funded themselves remember it, and a prepaid card does nothing to get them there.
Pocket money is the practice half. The teaching half sits alongside it: a story course for 6–8s, a daily money discovery for 8–12s, and a question the whole family answers each week. See how kids learn about money on CapKin.
Why there’s no card
The UK’s pocket money apps, Rooster Money, GoHenry and HyperJar Kids, all come with a card, and for older kids who shop on their own, a card makes sense. With a card, though, the daily question becomes “is my child’s card topped up?” more than “is my child learning?”. For younger kids it also replaces coins and jars, which they understand, with tapping, which they don’t. Most of these cards come with a subscription, too.
CapKin doesn’t put payment power in a seven-year-old’s pocket. It puts the family’s numbers where everyone can see them. If you later want a card as well, run both: the card pays, CapKin keeps the books.
How it compares
| App | Price | Card | Tracks physical cash? | What it really is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CapKin | Free during beta | No | Yes — coins, notes, “money mum’s holding” | Family budget with per-child pocket money ledgers |
| Rooster Money | Card £1.99/mo (free for NatWest customers) | Prepaid card | Partly | Kids’ card with pocket money features |
| GoHenry | From £3.99/mo | Prepaid card | No | Kids’ card with money missions |
| HyperJar Kids | Free | Prepaid card | No | Prepaid card with digital savings jars |
If your child needs to pay for the school canteen or shop online themselves, those cards do a job CapKin doesn’t, and if you bank with NatWest, Rooster’s card costs nothing. If pocket money in your house means chores with per-task rates, a chore app tracks that loop better; CapKin doesn’t do chore charts.
The UK free cards, Starling Under 16s, HyperJar and Revolut <18, each need a parent account at that bank. How they compare with Rooster, GoHenry and the no-card trackers, and what the Barclays takeover of GoHenry changes, is in money apps for kids without a debit card.
If your real problem is the ledger (who’s been paid, who’s owed, where it went, what’s being saved), the card apps track only what passes through their card. CapKin tracks the money your family actually uses: coins, notes, birthday tenners and all.
CapKin grows with your kids, too: the same setup a younger child starts with is the budget a teenager later joins as a full member. See our budget app for teens. If your family says allowance, the same approach is on our allowance app without a debit card page. To work out the amount, try the allowance calculator by age.
Frequently asked questions
- We’ve got three kids. Does that work?
- Yes. Each child has their own balance, goals and history inside the one family budget. Sibling maths (“he got more than me”) stops being a debate, because the record is right there.
- What about money from grandparents and birthdays?
- Log it as it arrives and it joins the child’s balance. That’s the advantage of a tracker over a card: a fiver in a birthday card counts just as much as a bank transfer.
- My kid is five. Too young?
- For logging their own spending, probably; that starts working around six or seven. But the balance, the automatic weekly top-up and the savings goal work from day one; you just do the logging for a while.
- What does it cost?
- Nothing during beta, for the whole family, and founding households keep the free tier. No per-child pricing, no ads.
- I’m the one holding their money. Does CapKin handle that?
- That’s exactly what it’s for. The “Bank of Mum and Dad” finally gets statements: what’s been credited, what they’ve spent, what’s locked in goals. When your kid asks to cash out £10, you both already agree on the balance.
- Is it safe for kids?
- Only a parent can set up a child’s access, and everything a child enters waits for a parent’s approval. CapKin collects no personal details from children, shows no ads, sells no data, and voice recordings are deleted the second they’re transcribed. The short, readable version is in the privacy policy.