Yesterday NatWest and O2 announced the launch of their new Load&Go card, which is primarily aimed at children of 13 and older.
The card will all kids to use ATM machines and to buy stuff online but does not have an over draft facility. Effectively, parents will load the card with a predetermined amount of money or set up a direct debit for an allowance/pocket money every week or month and the child will then be responsible for their own budgeting.
Learning about this on the Daily Mail website, I was itching to finish reading the article so I could get to the comments – knowing how terribly ‘right’ they would be.
By the way, I don’t mean ‘right’ in a correct sense… I mean, out of touch middle income, middle England loonies with too much time on their hands ranting about how ALL kids cant be trusted, they’re all scam artists, all the banks are up to no good and don’t deserve to get paid, how could the government possibly allow such a hennas proposition?! Etc… Etc…
I wasn’t disappointed.
But, as much as Carol B, from the Cotswolds, thinks this is a “ridiculous idea” and how fed up she is to “the back teeth of kids being treated as adults and being given a free rein to so exactly what they like, that is why they are so badly behaved nowadays.” There is merit in some of the comments.
Whilst it is obviously a good idea that kids learn to budget properly like they will in adult life but without the ability to monumentally screw up and wind up in all sorts of debt; does this expose 13 year olds to the debauch online world of sex toys and prescription drugs?
That’d be rubbish.
Again, on the positive side, this Load&Go card will provide a new safety to a kid wanting to go any buy something with his or her pocket money. Instead of waltzing down the high street with however much money in cash only to then walk back the other way with a new possession of equal worth to the original cash – at least this way the little whippersnapper is only at a heightened risk on the return journey.
…I’d like to think I still have enough faith in society for a 13 year old to remain unscathed as no one will both mugging him, tourturing the PIN number out of him and hightailing it to a ATM to withdraw about £20. If I read The Daily Mail comments much more, I will begin to think otherwise.
1 Comment
July 24, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Sounds like a sensible idea to me!