My First Digital Wallet
Where Is My Money?
Book 1 in the My First... series · Ages 10–13
A birthday present with no corners. A wallet that holds no money. And $6.75 that walks out the door.
Emma turns 10 and gets a digital wallet. The app says $0.00. Three minutes later it says $25.00, sent by a grandmother 400 miles away, and Emma is left with a question nobody can answer quickly: where is my money, right now?
Her dad hands her a green notebook and tells her to write down the questions she cannot answer yet. That notebook is about to get a lot of use.
Days later, $6.75 disappears. There is a company name she has never heard of, a date that makes no sense, and five suspects. Emma works through them one by one for three weeks, and the answer had been sitting in plain sight the whole time, on a screen she had opened sixteen times without once pressing it.
Nothing is hidden from the reader. Every clue arrives on the same page Emma gets it.
What your child learns
Behind the mystery is a careful, complete explanation of how digital money really works, written for ages 10 to 13:
- What money is, and why a wallet doesn't hold it itself
- Where the money is really kept, and the three roads it takes to get in
- What happens in the one second a phone touches a card reader: four questions, three parties, one answer
- How to read a transaction record: the four parts of every line, and why the date on screen is often not the day it happened
- Why nobody, ever, has a good reason to ask for a PIN code
- What to do in the first five minutes after a phone goes missing
- How to recognize a scam message by its three ingredients: fear, a clock, and one single door
- Spending limits and fees, and why they're there to help, not to police
- Cash against digital, compared honestly, including what cash still does better
- The four-minute weekly habit that catches almost everything
How the book is designed
Every chapter ends with the same three things: a short verse that makes the lesson stick, Emma's own notebook recap, and a set of puzzles and missions to work through with a grown-up. The book closes with a final challenge, an answer key, a glossary, and a note for parents and teachers.
No real brands appear anywhere. Every figure is illustrative, and the book says so plainly, because wallet rules, limits, and fees differ between products and change over time. Nothing here is financial advice.
The My First... series
Each book stands alone and ends by handing Emma a question she cannot answer. Yet. Ahead of her: a bank account, a budget, a first paycheck, subscriptions, online purchases, a savings goal, credit, and an investment that can go down.