The greenlight app has become increasingly popular among parents looking to teach their kids important financial skills. This smart debit card and accompanying app allows parents to easily transfer allowance money, set spending categories and limits, and track purchases. For many families, Greenlight provides a seamless way to introduce investing to children. Here’s a complete guide on how to invest on the greenlight app.
Link bank account for transfers and auto-investing
The first step to invest through Greenlight is linking your bank account. This allows seamless transfers to automate allowance funding on a recurring schedule. Once the bank account is connected, parents can set up auto-deposits into the child’s Greenlight Brokerage account. This recurring investment feed allows the child’s portfolio to consistently build over time.
Open Greenlight investment account for the child
After linking the funding bank account, parents need to open a Greenlight Brokerage Account specifically for the child if investing is the goal. This provides access to the Greenlight investment platform featuring over 30 kid-friendly stocks and ETFs to choose from. Parents can decide the risk level they are comfortable with for their child based on age and investment time horizon.
Enable child money controls and set investment amount
A key benefit of Greenlight is the parental controls allowing customized supervision based on the child’s financial maturity and responsibility. When first enabling investing, strict controls may be preferred with a set recurring amount. As the child demonstrates responsible habits, controls can be relaxed with greater freedom to fund their own portfolio.
Child explores stocks and parents approve purchases
The educational benefit of Greenlight investing is allowing the child to browse stocks and ETFs to find companies that interest them. The child can add interesting investment ideas to their watchlist for future consideration. To make a trade, they will submit the selected investment which then requires parent approval before execution.
Track performance and continue discussion
As the child builds their Greenlight investment portfolio over time, it presents many opportunities for parenting conversations about saving, asset values, market news, being a business owner, and more. Monitoring the account performance together and providing guidance is key to making it a meaningful educational experience.
The Greenlight investing platform provides a unique opportunity for kids to gain financial experience in a parent-controlled environment. By funding investment capital, overseeing trades, tracking performance, and discussing concepts together, parents can use Greenlight to teach core money lessons that will serve children for life.