Over the past two years, my oldest child — who is now in 7th grade — has started managing her own money.
To support this, I opened a fee-free Capital One MONEY account. This account comes with a debit card and lets her separate spending and savings (similar to a sinking fund). Instant transfers are convenient since I already bank with Capital One.
While it’s worked well for spending, something’s been missing. My daughter has an entrepreneurial streak; she loves earning money by shoveling snow, walking dogs and mowing lawns, but every dollar she earns disappears as quickly as it arrives.
That’s normal for a 12-year-old, but I want her to develop habits like living on less than you earn and paying yourself first.
And the problem with her current account is that since it pays just 0.10% APY and has no investment options, it provides little incentive for her to save.
So I set out to find an app that combines banking and investing, to help her see how saving and spending work together. While I could open a UTMA account with Fidelity or Vanguard and keep her Capital One account, I wanted an all-in-one solution to make the connection more tangible.
After researching several options, we decided that Acorns Early was the right option for us. However, other apps are worth considering based on your needs. Here are the ones I found most interesting during my research.
#1. Acorns Early (Best for Learning About Long-Term Investing)
Acorns bought the financial education and money management app GoHenry in 2023, rebranding it as Acorns Early.
The account comes with a debit card and investing tools for kids ages 6 to 18.
Parents can set up automatic allowances, assign paid chores and track spending. Kids can save for goals, manage budgets, and set their purchases to “round up” in order to save spare change.
The app’s investing feature allows kids to start investing in diversified ETF portfolios. It also includes educational tools. The service costs $5 per month for one child and $10 for two to four kids. The app includes a 30-day free trial.
My thoughts: I chose Acorns Early because it best aligns with my goal of combining banking and long-term investing. Its focus on automation and passive investing helps build the habit of consistently setting aside money — little by little — through dollar-cost averaging.
At first, I hesitated because I thought it functioned more like a robo-advisor, where selling or transferring assets is taxable. However, after some research, I learned that you own the ETFs in Acorns Early, which can be moved in kind. This was a big plus because it avoids the need to sell shares and trigger a taxable event later.
Funds are placed in their “aggressive” portfolio, which includes diversified ETFs, such as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) for large companies, the Vanguard Small-Cap ETF (VB) for small companies, and the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) for emerging markets. (I.e., kids can’t choose specific investments, like specific ETFs or stocks.)
While the fees were initially difficult to swallow, and there is no high-yield savings component, Acorns Early checked all my most important boxes. It’s a valuable tool for teaching my daughter the power of long-term investing and building consistent financial habits.
#2. Greenlight (Best for Teaching Money Management Skills)
Greenlight is a family banking app and debit card for kids and teens. It offers up to five customizable cards per family.
Parents can set spending limits, block stores or categories, receive real-time spending notifications, and send instant money transfers. Kids can set savings goals, earn interest, and (with the Max and Infinity plans) invest in stocks and ETFs.
Additional tools include chore management, automated allowance payments, and a “Level Up” financial literacy game to teach kids money management skills.
Greenlight offers three tiered plans:
- Core – $5.99 per month
- Max – $9.98 per month
- Infinity – $14.98 per month
All three plans include the core features: customizable debit cards, savings tools, allowance management, and financial education.
Kids earn interest on their savings, with rates increasing by plan: 2% (Core), 3% (Max), and 5% (Infinity).
The Max plan adds investment tools, 1% cash-back on purchases and identity theft protection. The Infinity plan builds on this with driving reports, crash detection, family location sharing and SOS alerts.
My thoughts: We have friends with high school-aged kids who like Greenlight, so it was the first app we looked into. I liked it a lot.
Greenlight’s spending controls are far more detailed than Acorns Early’s. You can choose from category-specific limits (such as those for restaurants or online gaming), store-specific limits, overall spending caps, and ATM withdrawal restrictions.
If your kids make many transactions, as older teens often do, Greenlight’s features give parents much finer control over spending.
Another great feature is parent-paid interest, which allows you to reward kids’ savings habits directly. For example, I could offer a crazy interest rate — something like 50% per year — to motivate my kids to save.
You could argue that this more guaranteed approach to saving is a better way to build early habits since investing carries the risk of losing money. That said, experiencing market downturns is inevitable, so it may not be the best first lesson for young savers.
Overall, Greenlight excels at day-to-day budgeting and spending, while Acorns Early focuses on long-term investing, which better aligns with my current goals. If your priority is teaching kids money management and budgeting, Greenlight is an excellent choice.
#3. Fidelity Youth (Best Fee-Free Account)
The Fidelity Youth account is designed for teens aged 13 to 17 to save, spend, and invest their money with parental oversight. It features no fees or minimum balances and includes a debit card for spending. Teens can invest as little as $1, and uninvested cash earns a high APY through a money market fund.
Additional tools — such as automatic savings, allowance scheduling and interactive financial lessons — encourage teens to build strong financial habits. Parents can monitor transactions and receive activity notifications.
However, the available spending restrictions are nowhere as granular as those offered by Greenlight and Acorns Early.
To open the account, parents must already have a Fidelity account. When the teen turns 18, the account transitions into a standard brokerage account.
My thoughts: I really like the Fidelity Youth Account, but I’m not a Fidelity customer, and I don’t have a teen just yet. Still, I think this account is the best no-fee combined banking and investing app for parents who invest with Fidelity (or who are willing to move funds).
I like that it features a high APY on uninvested cash. For teens, seeing their money grow even a little can be a powerful way to connect the ability to save with increasing your wealth.
Another major strength is the broad investment options. Unlike Acorns Early, which offers a more structured approach, Fidelity offers access to its full range of investments. This flexibility is ideal for those who want to be more hands-on.
Suppose you want a fee-free, all-in-one banking and investing solution. In that case, moving your emergency fund or cash to Fidelity may be worth moving to take advantage of their high-APY account and access this offering (if you’re not already a customer).
#4. Cash App (Runner-Up for Fee-Free Saving and Investing)
Cash App’s teen accounts allow users aged 13 to 17 to send and receive peer-to-peer payments, manage their money, and use a customizable Visa debit card with parental supervision.
Teens can make in-store purchases, withdraw cash from ATMs (with a $2 fee), and set savings goals with no balance requirements.
Parents must authorize the account and can set spending limits, review monthly activity statements, and pause or cancel the teen’s account at any time. Stock investing is available with parental permission, but teens cannot access Bitcoin or cross-border payments.
My thoughts: Cash App’s teen account is a solid option thanks to its spending tools, especially if you’re already a Cash App user. It’s fee-free, which is a big plus, but there’s no instant transfer option from other banks, making it best suited for families already using the Cash App ecosystem.
That said, it’s pretty bare-bones. While it offers custodial investing for individual stocks and ETFs, it lacks features like automated savings tools. It doesn’t provide any APY on cash balances.
As a result, it’s more of a stepping stone for teens learning to manage money. It won’t teach kids much of value.
Final Thoughts
While I’ve compared all these apps, I’m unsure how much they’ll help in the long term. Like most tech today, they give parents plenty of control — but I see the real value being in what they can reinforce.
For me, apps are tools to introduce and show important habits in action, such as paying yourself first. Saving 10% or 20% of what you make is one of the surest ways to build wealth over time.
In a perfect world, my kids would grow up with money saved and still feel like they weren’t deprived of experiences.
It’s my actions as a parent and the conversations we have about money that will make the most significant difference. But for now, I’m willing to try Acorns Early. If nothing else, apps like these help start important conversations — and seeing those habits work in real-time can be a powerful lesson.
