It's summer, which means no school for the kid. Which means I now have relatively cheap day-labor available for yard-work.

I am a capitalist, so I intend to pay my son for the work he does.

Growing up, mom got me a physical paper ledger, where I'd record the $15 I made mowing the lawn, or the $20 I took out to buy gas. Mom was the bank.

With Noah, we've started the same thing. And then came Zefty.

It's a really nice, really simple site to allow Mom (or Dad) be the bank, and provide online-banking to their children. No, really, it's actually useful.

As parents, you can login, setup an account, give it an initial balance. You can schedule recurring deposits (weekly or monthly allowance), or you can manage deposits manually ($15 for mowing the lawn).

Children can login and calculate how long it'd take to save for some item, or they can print checks to be redeemed by the parents to make a withdrawal.

Being a true capitalist and having a son who likes to wantonly and intentionally destroy things, I was glad to find Zefty supports negative balances and debt. And it doesn't allow a child to bounce a check he can't cover with funds in his account.

All in all, Zefty is small, but seems to perfectly fit the bill for a parent of an 11 year old.