If any of these things sounds remotely familiar to you, then perhaps you'd like to set up a proper children's banking system using your home computer.
BoD (which stands for 'Bank of Daddy') is a program that automates your children's allowances and expenditures.
gunzip, un-tar and then...
./configure
make
make install
If you are running Windoze or something that can't
run configure scripts and makefiles, don't sweat it.
Just compile all of the source files together and
link it to the FLTK library.
No, I won't provide a binary version, project files and such.
You are the bank manager. When you run the program, you can open the account information for any of your 'customers' and do simple admin stuff like print statements, issue chequebooks, accept deposits or pay out cash from their accounts.
The program will pay allowances into the accounts automatically even when the program is not being run - so long as the system clock on your machine is correctly set. You can even choose to set up interest rates on savings and overdrafts (although you may choose to prohibit the latter).
It is intended that you would print statements for your children so that they can track their savings and expenditures accurately. It is hoped that there is educational value in doing that.
I do not intend you to give your children cash from their accounts as a routine matter - instead, your print out a book of mildly realistic looking numbered cheques. When they need money, they write you a cheque and you give them cash. Once every couple of days (or as necessary), you fire up BoD and enter the cheques into the computer and tear them up.
Each cheque will thus be recorded onto their statements.
I suggest a 2% or 3% for 8/9yr old children (that's 3% per week, compounded weekly - it adds up quite quickly). A higher rate would be needed for younger children and a lower one for older kids. You can adjust BoD's interest rate independantly for each child.
Interest is managed simply so that children can more easily comprehend it. Each week, just before their allowance is paid, BoD will pay interest on the final balance (or deduct it if there is an overdraft).
You may wonder how BoD manages to pay allowance money and compute interest when the program is not running - but it's really much simpler than that. Whenever you DO run BoD, it looks to see how long it has been since interest/allowance payments were last made and make the appropriate number of calculations just as if it had been run once a week. However, it's probably better not to get into details of this with your children - they need to 'imagine' that their allowance is really still being paid at the expected time - or else they won't really trust the program.
BOD_PRINT_COMMAND -- The command needed to print Postscript
data read from 'stdin'. This is usually
just 'lpr' - which is the default.
If you don't have a printer, you can
set this to 'gs' (ghostscript) and see
the output on-screen. Printing this stuff
is more realistic though.
BOD_HOME -- The directory where the account data is
held. The default is the current directory.
By convention, BoD account files have the extension '.bod' and are
named the same as the account holder.
Start the program by running the 'BoD' executable. The interface is graphical and VERY easy to understand. Account files are auto-saved at every opportunity.