Financial Literacy Program for Kids Yields Profits for Entrepreneur

Teaching financial literacy to kids has reaped its own financial strength for Scottsdale-based My Job Chart, which founder and CEO Gregg Murset says adds a new member every two minutes. A certified financial planner with 20 years’ experience in the insurance and financial services industry, Murset says the idea came from wanting to instill in his own children characteristics he’d found common to business owners: “They work hard and make good money decisions.” He created a free online program that allows children to keep track of chores or jobs and the money they’ve earned, and provides parents with a variety of avenues for paying them.

Reminiscent of the old-style chart many parents would post on, for instance, the refrigerator, this program uses today’s technology to engage the children on computer, iPhone or other device. The site invites parents to sign up their children (ages 5 to 15) and set up a schedule of tasks, and the children keep track of points they accumulate, which they can save, share with a charity or spend.

Murset built the business on a premium business model, providing the app for free but monetizing on the back end. For instance, the My Job Chart site offers a link to Amazon.com, and children who choose to spend their accumulated points can indicate the item they want and the parent can order it — adding a convenience to parents through the delivery directly to their home — and Amazon.com pays a commission to My Job Chart. Banks also pay a commission when parents open a savings account for their children. My Job Chart has proved five times better at getting parents to open kids’ savings accounts than banks’ efforts at cross-selling their own customers, Murset relates.

Initially launching My Job Chart in 2010, Murset spent that first year “figuring things out and getting the website to handle a lot of traffic.” Relaunched in 2011 with 50,000 members, My Job Chart had more than 500,000 members as of the beginning of last month — a 900-percent growth rate for itself and an economic impact of money paid by parents to their children in excess of $2 million.