Name Your Family's Money

A five-year-old hears "five dollars" and feels almost nothing. Hand that same kid 500 Zitobucks and suddenly there's a number worth protecting.

That's the whole idea behind Family Currency, which is live today on every KidCash plan — including Free.

What it does

Open Settings → Family → 🪙 Family Currency and give your family's money three things:

• A name. Zitobucks, Nova Coins, Dragon Gold — whatever sticks. Up to 30 characters.
• A symbol. One to eight characters. Emoji work.
• A rate. How many of your coins equal one dollar. One tap gets you 1×, 2×, 5×, 10×, or 100×, and you can type any rate in between.

Save, and the dollar signs disappear from the app. A $5.00 allowance at 100× shows up as Ƶ500. At 10× it's Ƶ50. At 1× it's Ƶ5.00 — same money, new name.

Where it shows up

Everywhere your family looks at a balance:

• The parent dashboard and every kid card
• Public kid profiles, so your child sees their own currency when they check from the couch
• Printed QR dollar bills — the denomination on the bill matches your rate
• Weekly digest emails and in-app notifications
• The amount boxes themselves, so you type in coins instead of doing the math

The rate is the interesting part

Younger kids read magnitude before they read decimals. A rate of 100× turns every allowance into a satisfying three-digit number and quietly retires the concept of cents — $0.75 of interest becomes 75 coins, which a six-year-old can hold in their head.

Older kids often want the opposite. Leave the rate at 1× and keep the mechanics identical to a real bank account, with a family name on top for fun.

Same app, two very different lessons, one dropdown apart.

Dollars stay the truth

Under the hood, KidCash still stores every balance in dollars and cents. Family Currency is a lens over that — the conversion happens on the way in and on the way out.

Which means a few things worth knowing:

• Interest and recurring allowances still calculate in dollars, so nothing drifts as you change the rate.
• Exports and backups come out in dollars. Your data stays portable, and an export you download today still makes sense if you turn the coin off tomorrow.
• Turning it off restores dollar amounts exactly. Nothing is converted permanently, so the toggle is safe to experiment with.

Change the rate later and every historical transaction re-renders at the new one. A year of $1 chores becomes a year of 100-coin chores.

Try it this week

Let your kid name it. That single act of ownership does more for engagement than any feature we could design — a currency your child invented is one they'll check on.

Settings → Family → 🪙 Family Currency. Two minutes, and the money in your house has a name.

— The KidCash Team

P.S. Symbols are a fun place to spend thirty seconds. Ƶ, ✦, ⭐, or a plain "KC" all work — and yes, a kid choosing their own symbol counts as a valid use of a Tuesday evening.