Teach Your Kids Financial Responsibility with an Easy-to-Use Bank Account Monitor

Instilling financial responsibility is an important part of raising children, and it’s common to give kids small amounts of money in exchange for chores and such, which they can then spend at their discretion. That was simple in the swingin’ cash-friendly days of the past, but not in our modern world of electronic banking. Jason Barnett wanted to teach his children those important lessons, but with the convenience of modern banking.

To do that, Barnett used a Raspberry Pi and ePaper display to show his kids how much money they have in their Monzo pots. Monzo, if you’re not familiar, is a British electronic banking service that let’s you instantly move money between virtual accounts called pots. Each of Barnett’s children have their own pot, which he can transfer their allowances into those, or out of them when the kids want to buy something.

To give the kids a quick and easy when to check their balances, Barnett loaded a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Stretch Lite and connected a small ePaper display via SPI. It then uses the Monzo API to pull the balances of the pots every 15 minutes, and a Python script to update the display. The final product provides and easy way for the children to keep track of their balances.