My teen daughter has a debit card from Capital One 360 (used to be ING). I put her allowance on it and she adds babysitting money. She can use it anywhere you can use a credit card. She does have control over the card, but since she's on my Capital One account, I can see all the transaction she makes. I can just transfer money from my other 360 account or checking account at another bank to the card online.

She lost the card once. I transferred all the money to my account immediately, and nothing was lost. Plus, there's a pin number.

What about the reloadable cards you can buy at CVS like the Vanilla? They act like Visa debits. You could do it in small increments like $50 or $100 at a time so she can't blow through a large sum all at once? But if she loses the card, the money cant be recovered.

I would buy clothing, hair products, etc. and send them. I'd also prepay for things like haircuts - the nursing homes I've been looking at have a gift card/way to do it online.

My mom lives in an out-of-state assisted living facility and needs about $200 a month from family members for things like haircuts and clothes. She is absolutely terrible with money and has overdrawn her account a few times, which we ends up costing additional money. Normally, I just sporadically send her cash, but I can never tell if she got the money, and I think sometimes she loses it. Or, if she's short on money, she won't tell anyone and will just overdraw her account. She also has trouble getting to the bank because she can't drive.

How do I get her a steady stream of cash that she can easily access but can't spend all at once? Are there reloadable pre-paid credit cards for seniors? Something that I could give her but then reload from my own home each month? Or, do I just need to automatically transfer money to her account each month and hope she doesn't overdraw her account again? I feel like there must be a solution I'm not thinking of.