When my oldest daughter was five we bought her three piggy banks. One said “Spend,” one said “Give,” one said “Save.” My wife’s best friend was raised with the discipline of saving early and it served her well through life. We thought if we started our daughter with this framework young enough, the habit would stick before she had any reason to question it.

In reality she did not immediately make the connection between the three pigs. At five she did not yet understand the value of money, and splitting her allowance into three places did not make sense to her. Why would it. She just wanted to buy things.

A good surprise came from the “Give” bucket. Letting her use that money to choose a charity ended up being pretty rewarding for her. I realized this was an unexpected way she could start to understand the value of setting aside some of her money for something other than buying stuffies. The other problem was simpler but more persistent. She would want to buy something when we were out and we would not have brought her “Spend” money. I would usually tell her I was going to use my money and we would pay me back from the piggie bank later. I’d always forget.”

She was starting to get wise to this loophole. I needed to keep some real accounting to teach her anything. So I decided to look for an app where I could keep track of these transactions.

Most every app I could find in the App Store for managing children’s allowances was a thinly veiled attempt to get me to create a prepaid credit card to give to my child. That is not what I wanted. I wanted an app that provides a simple service for a fee: tracking categories of allowance for a child. Not a “free app” that preys on my daughter or myself.

There was one called RoosterMoney which was perfect. It offered the ability to create an allowance and break it into multiple buckets. She could have it on her iPad and see what she had to spend without edit access or weird ads. I could manage from my phone. Her money was not in the pigs anymore (sad because they were cute). It was basically in an app full of IOUs now. Maybe not as cute, but more trackable and easy for her to follow.

The harder thing to explain was saving. Unlike the “give” category, “save” was just a bucket you’re meant to forget about. Eventually I had the idea to create a custodial account in E-Trade for her. This is an account I maintain alongside my other investment accounts, but when she is of age she will own it fully. When she accrues enough in her “Save” bucket, I buy her some ETF shares. Now she has a number she can watch go up now and then, which helps her understand the value of the “Save” category in a way that a piggy bank sitting on a shelf never could.

Then the rooster died. RoosterMoney announced it had been bought by a local bank in England and they were shutting down access to people in the US. Upside, they refunded my money. Downside, the app was gone. I made a spreadsheet and my daughter and I used that as a replacement. It worked. It was not fun.

So I built Pockets.

Pockets takes everything we had in RoosterMoney but dials it into my specific needs. It is focused on parents administering allowances for children with multiple buckets. It auto-accrues over time based on your specific allowance amount and period for each child. Ours is five dollars every Sunday. It tracks transactions so I can look back and remind her why there is a stuffy-shaped hole in her “Spend” bucket.

What is next: a share feature that gives the child a way to see the values of their buckets without edit access. A way to sync with apps like YNAB so I can account for what I have promised to my child. And an iOS app so the spreadsheet days are fully behind us.

If you want to check it out, Pockets is at pockets.standardpixel.com.