Greenlight is a debit card and money app for kids and teens, and it's how we took the nagging out of chores in our house. There are some affiliate links in this post which give me a small incentive.

It helped our girls keep up with their chores and get smarter with money at the same time. Here's exactly how we set up the Greenlight app for chores, plus what's changed in the app since we started.

Why We Started Using Greenlight

We weren't looking for a chore app at all. One of my older daughters was great at saving and had a lot of cash from holidays and birthdays.

She liked buying upgrades for her online games, so she'd hand us cash and we'd buy them for her. She wanted a way to pay for things herself and stop carrying so much cash around.

We went looking for a reloadable prepaid card, which was harder to find than I expected. Gift cards aren't made to be reloaded, and that search is how I found Greenlight.

Clean House Meets Financially Savvy Kids

Once I read into it, I realized it did a lot more than hold money. It brought chores, allowance, paydays and savings together in one place.

Easier Money Management

We could still put lump sums of cash on the card, which was our original goal. That gave the girls the freedom to make their own purchases with their own money.

Before Greenlight, I tracked allowances in a Google spreadsheet. Since I was the one keeping it up, that was a lot of work.

Less Nagging About Chores

Chore time could turn into a nag-fest, and I'm always experimenting with it. Greenlight felt like it could solve a handful of problems at once.

No more loose cash, spreadsheets, nagging or weekly list-making. Recurring chores repeat on their own schedule, so I didn't have to rewrite the same list every week.

The girls were excited too, because these were their first debit cards. If they were out with friends and needed money, I could send it through the app instead of driving over.

How the Greenlight App Works

It took a little setup to get chores working the way we wanted. Here's how the Greenlight app fits together for chores and money lessons.

As a parent, you start on a dashboard that lists each of your kids. You can see their spending, saving and giving balances at a glance.

Parent's Wallet

The Parent's Wallet is the holding area for money you move in from your linked funding account. When you pay out for chores or allowance, the money comes from here.

You can add money whenever you need to, or set up auto funding on a schedule or when the balance gets low. Each parent can connect their own funding source.

Your Kids' Money

Tap on a child to see their spend, save, give and earn options. We'll cover the first three here.

Spend

Kids get their own debit card, and you can turn it on or off with a tap. You can also set spending controls by store or category and get alerts when they make a purchase.

We paid out chore earnings by moving money into their spending balance.

Save

Kids can set savings goals for specific things they want. When one of my girls was saving for highlights and a water bottle, she could watch her progress add up.

If you want to encourage saving, you can pay parent-paid interest at a rate you choose. There's also a round-up setting that saves the spare change from each purchase.

Give

The give balance works like savings but goes to charity. Your child can choose a cause they care about right in the app.

How to Use the Greenlight App for Chores

The Earn section is where chores and money come together. You can set up one-time or recurring chores and decide how each one pays.

Pay Per Chore

This is the setup I always wanted. You can give each chore its own flat amount, even recurring ones, and pay it out once you approve it.

When we started, weekly chores couldn't carry their own dollar amount. We added the amount to each chore's name and tallied everything up on Fridays, so this update is a big deal.

Paying per chore cut down on arguments over who does what. It also gave the girls a reason to grab the little jobs that usually get overlooked.

Allowance Tied to Chores

If you'd rather pay a set allowance, you can schedule it weekly, every two weeks or monthly. You can also connect it to chores.

With partial pay, kids earn a percentage of their allowance based on how many chores they finish. With all or nothing, they only get paid if every chore is done by payday.

Family Hub

Greenlight also has a Family Hub, a shared screen at home that shows the family chore list. Kids can mark chores done there, and payments still happen in the app.

Our Takeaway

Greenlight freed up so much of my time. Less nagging, no more rewriting the same chore list, and faster cleanups.

Head over to Greenlight to learn more and see the current plans. Greenlight also has a helpful guide to how chores and allowance work in the app.

Watch the video at the top for my full walkthrough. The app screens have been updated since I filmed it, but the basic setup is the same.