- Teaching teens financial management is
an area we often come up short in the US.
While the education system has made recent strides,
it's still relatively uncommon
for personal finance skills to be taught in high school.
This leaves it up to parents
to ensure their children can successfully manage money.
To help with that task,
Copper has created a mobile app that allows parents
to monitor their teens' spending and saving.
With Copper, parents can easily move money
back and forth between their own account
and to their teen's account.
In this video, let's take a closer look
at what Copper has to offer.
(happy music)
Hey everyone, this is Andy with the College Investor,
"Investing and Personal Finance for Millennials."
If you're new to the channel
and like what you hear, please hit Subscribe
so you're ready when our next video comes out, thanks.
Who is Copper?
Well, Copper is an all-digital bank designed for teens.
It was formed in April 2019
and it's based in Seattle, Washington.
It's founders are Eddie Behringer, Stefan Berglund.
Regarding their company, Behringer is quoted as saying,
"It became clear that our high school system
was failing Gen Z by not equipping them
with basic personal finance skills at a critical point
before they become adults and can fall victim
to predatory credit.
With FinTech and open banking,
we realized we could build a financial product
that provided tremendous value to teens and their parents
and that would drive real positive financial outcomes."
Let's talk about what Copper has to offer.
While its website may lead you to think differently,
Copper itself isn't actually a bank.
Copper is a FinTech company that uses SynapseFi
for the backend technology of its app.
SynapseFi is a partner of Evolve Bank & Trust.
The relationship between those two entities is
what makes it possible for Copper to offer banking services.
Copper is a mobile app that helps teach teens
about financial literacy.
Many banks don't have accounts oriented towards teens.
With parental oversight, Copper lets teens spend via-
And Included MasterCard debit card.
And parents are able to track
and monitor their teens spending.
Copper makes it easy to send money back and forth
between teens and parents.
If parents wanna send money for an allowance,
everything can be done digitally.
Given the digital nature of our economy,
this makes complete sense.
With their parents' help,
spending and saving habits can be discussed.
With the assistance from Copper,
parents can help their teens take control
of their finances and learn to spend responsibly.
Copper accounts include a MasterCard debit card,
the card is accepted everywhere that MasterCard is accepted.
You don't have to wait for the physical card to arrive
before you could use it.
Once a parent funds the account,
the virtual debit card can be used.
It can be used from the Copper app,
or added to Apple Pay, or Google Pay digital wallet.
You can also use the debit card to withdraw cash
at over 55,000 ATMs nationwide.
Let's talk about depositing cash with Copper.
You may wanna avoid this route if possible,
since it'll cost you extra.
Copper uses the Green Dot Network
to add cash to customer account.
That means you have to go
to a Green Dot retailer location in order to do this,
and know that these retailers often charge a fee
which can be up to $4.95 per transaction.
To avoid these fees,
try to transfer funds digitally instead.
Then there's the savings account feature from Copper.
Now, teens can easily set savings goals
and monitor their progress.
One time transfers to savings can be initiated at any time
or Copper users can set up automated savings schedules
as well.
Outside of these great features,
Copper also provides financial education.
Copper helps teach financial management
to teens in two primary ways.
First, it offers a financial literacy quiz
which allows teens to test their knowledge
and learn at the same time.
Second, it provides financial lessons
that it calls cheat codes.
Copper's financial education department is headed up
by Liz Frazier, a CFP, and author of "Beyond Piggy Banks
and Lemonade Stands: How to Teach Young Kids About Finance."
Let's discuss parental involvement with Copper.
Teens can still spend all their money in one location.
The app gives them the freedom to do that,
that's why good parental involvement is essential
to getting the most out of Copper.
Parents have certain controls through the app,
these include the ability to view transactions,
enabling notifications when teens make a purchase,
the ability to easily send and request funds
between accounts, and you can automate recurring transfers
between parent and teen accounts
for allowance or other regular funding.
With regard to deposit and spending limits,
there are some limits with your Copper account.
There's a $2,000 monthly load limit into your Copper account
for debit card funding or ACH,
and a $2,000 daily spending limit.
Transferring money into your Copper account
through ACH is free though and that process takes
between three to five days.
If you use a debit card to transfer money
into your Copper account, a small fee will be assessed
to cover Copper's transactional cost.
You can also use Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal
to transfer funds into your Copper account as well.
Let's discuss some fees in more detail.
There aren't any monthly fees, account maintenance fees,
or overdraft fees.
There may however, be charges
for Copper's third party ATM operators if you decide
to withdraw cash.
If you wanna add cash to your account like we talked about,
there may be fees charged by Green Dot retailers.
A small fee is charged when using an existing debit card
to transfer funds into your Copper account.
Perhaps you're ready to open an account with Copper,
well, here's how to do it.
You can visit the Copper website to open an account,
we'll have a link in our video description
to check that out.
If you are under 18 years of age, you'll need a parent
or guardian to finalize the account documents.
Once you've applied, you'll need to download the app
to access your account,
as there is currently no way to log in on a desktop browser.
In the end, is Copper worth it?
Well for parents who wanna teach their teens
financial management,
Copper is a great supplement to that.
In addition to providing financial education,
it allows teens to use real money
rather than being limited to just discussions or a course.
Copper doesn't cost anything to use
if you avoid its usage related fees,
which is fairly easy to do.
Overall, we think it's worth checking out.
However, Copper doesn't offer any credit building tools
and pays virtually zero interest on deposits
which is 0.001%.
If either of these drawbacks are a deal breaker for you,
you may wanna consider alternative teen checking accounts
such as Step or Axos First Checking.
We'll have links to those and Copper
in our video description.
Thanks for hanging out today.
This is Andy from the College Investor
and we'll see you in the next video.
(happy music continues)