Problem: Need to keep the ole Apple account “working” which requires attaching payment method. And he will spend money in apps (or on Amazon, another story), sometimes a lot of money!
I’ve been trying to think of a means to allot an amount of money that he can’t go beyond. But he’s not going to be able to choose to stop buying, so the means needs to stop him, without repercussions. I keep coming back to how, if you try to buy something on an account, but there aren’t sufficient funds to do so, your attempt doesn’t just go away. It may fail at first, but then the next time a viable payment method is attached to the account, the charge will still go through.
Is there something I’m not thinking of?
Ideas for controlling my autistic brother’s spending
byu/CandidateMelodic1347 inpersonalfinance
Posted by CandidateMelodic1347
8 Comments
Parental controls or prepaid credit card.
Get a loadable debit card that you can add funds to and will decline once it runs out.
Have you tried replacing the account with one that doesn’t have any payment information on it?
There’s a company called “privacy” that generates card numbers attached to your bank account.
You can set per transaction limits, monthly limits, merchant restrictions (for example, a card number that only works on Amazon). It’s essentially a virtual debit card. The company makes its money on the debit transaction fees and debits your bank account. You can’t attach it to a credit card, which is why I don’t use it more often. No cash back/points. You can have a dozen cards for a dozen merchants. You can also freeze/unfreeze the card in just a few clicks. It’s a great way to sign up for free trials and never get charged lol.
The idea came about as a way to shop online without giving unsavory merchants unlimited access to charge your card/bank, so that you could shop online and have less risk of having your banking info stolen.
Back when we set up a family account they would only allow one Apple ID to pay, so my account is the payment account, and my husband and mom have their own Apple IDs, but all of our purchases are shared and come through my card. I can, at any time, turn their accounts into kid accounts, and require my approval for them to purchase anything. This was bypass-able with an ITunes gift card.
I don’t know if it’s still like that, but it’s easy enough to remove payment cards and only use the Apple gift cards.
This is more of an apple sub question. From a personal finance perspective, how old is this brother? Does someone have either guardianship or power of attorney over him?
You can’t just remove the payment method from the Apple account? How was one added in the first place? With Google’s ecosystem, you can have child accounts that are managed by a parental account, and things like transactions, etc have to be approved.
Don’t use apple products, every other piece of technology works properly
Apple Family Sharing with “Ask to Buy” enabled on his account catches this cleanly. Every purchase routes through you for approval before the charge is even attempted, so the retry queue you’re worried about never gets a chance. Pair that with privacy com or halocard set to a hard monthly cap and you’ve got two layers covering both the apps side and the card side.