I got this offer in my e-mail today. I know that kids need to learn about money, but giving a 6-year-old a debit card seems a bit young for all but maybe a few kids.
AJ
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If you would give your 6-year-old an allowance, why not a debit card?
Presumably it’s limited to what you allocate to it.
It (and credit cards) will be what they use as teens and adults.
It seems young to me too, but the world changes and maybe we’re thinking in old terms.
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Not a parent, but I would think that parents would want to start teaching their kid about money by using physical money first. In fact, Fidelity suggests that in this article How to teach kids about money | Financial literacy for kids (fidelity.com) Their suggestion on when to introduce a debit card is for teenagers
Here’s Fidelity’s viewpoint on that:
Now, I will admit that I consider Fidelity to be somewhat of a ‘nanny broker’ so their views may be on the conservative side. But the plan that they laid out seems to line up with the way that I, as a non-parent, understand how kids brains develop.
AJ
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If I actually had to give a 6 yr old kid money to use when I or another adult was not present, I would feel much safer giving it to them on a card that I can cancel and turn off if lost than giving them cash that cannot be recovered if lost.
My kids used both, cash and the above referenced card. It was a great way to teach them about banking. I could even push notices to their phone/email about ways to earn money by doing chores.
There is one thing I can guarantee, my kids have never misplaced the money on their card. They have often misplaced cash I gave them (though in their defense, their mom often finds money she misplaced over the years so they come by it honestly).
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Yes, you would think. On the other hand, who uses physical money these days? So there’s that , but it still might be helpful, at least conceptually, to use physical money as a proxy for debit/credit, etc. 
(I’ve been carrying around the same $50 cash in my pocket for about a year now.)
Pete
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Have they misplaced the card? 
Son, no. Daughter, all the time - but only at home thankfully. She used to keep the card with her phone in one of those phone wallets, but was leaving her phone at various places (insert plug for Life360 phone tracking app), so she doesn’t do that any more.
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Valid point. There are some school events where my kids were specifically told not to bring cash as the only way to transact business with onsite concessions was via a card.
Out in the RV at one of the most beautiful county parks in the country today, and I had to pay for my non-reserved waterfront RV site using cash - no cards allowed. (You can make a reservation using a card, but there are several sites at this park that are not available for reservations, and are cash only.)
That said - my concern would be that without something physical, it’s hard to get kids to understand the concepts of how money works. Handing over a card for $10 vs. for $65 is much harder to understand the difference in price vs. handing over 2 $5 bills vs. 13 $5 dollar bills.
AJ
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