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I’m selling my 17 year old cousin my car. He wants to make regular payments on it, every two weeks or so. Instead of taking cash, issuing receipts, and tracking this on paper somewhere, I’d like to manage this online. Criteria would be the ability for him to make payments electronically, see payment history, and see the remaining balance.

I thought of PayPal invoicing him, but fees are too high for a personal loan of this nature. I also thought of some sort of custodial or joint savings account where he can, in effect, save the money for the car (even though he has it now) and just pay me in one lump sum when he has enough. None of these are a perfect fit though and I need some more ideas.

FYI the money itself is of no great concern to me. It’s a friendly agreement to get him some wheels and help him become fiscally responsible.

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    Why do you not want cash? If he has the money why do you not just take payment in full? If you're willing to take this risk, why not just cosign a loan from a lender with your cousin?
    – quid
    Commented Nov 19, 2019 at 1:46
  • @quid I will gladly take cash, but if received would like to put it somewhere that it will show up as a credit or deposit toward the goal -- whether that be a savings account, PayPal account, or whatever. Like I said I don't need the money; it's more about helping him manage money. He does not have payment in full. Also I don't think I can cosign a loan with him since he's a minor.
    – bvy
    Commented Nov 19, 2019 at 15:45

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Criteria would be the ability for him to ... see the remaining balance.

For just the two of you, a shared Google spreadsheet is far and away the simplest path to satisfying this criterion, while dwizum's answer handles the other two.

EDIT: presuming you aren't charging him interest, here's an example spreadsheet.

enter image description here

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  • This works very well, it's also easy to calculate interest if you want to apply any.
    – NL - SE listen to your users
    Commented Nov 19, 2019 at 20:36
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One option is to talk to a local bank or credit union, and see if your plans would integrate well into their online banking tools. You may be able to kill two birds with one stone - get him on a plan to pay you back, and also get him some exposure to "real" banking tools.

For instance, my credit union has a tool in our online banking platform that lets you treat payments to individuals as if they were "bill pay" payees. You can set up your normal online bill pay scenarios for typical recurring bills, but you can also create a bill pay configuration that pays an individual. The actual payment can be configured to make an electronic transfer or actually print and mail a paper check. It can be configured to recur on a set schedule (either by automatically making the payments, or just giving you an alert), and it keeps track of payment history by linking the payee to the actual transactions you issue from it.

A tool like that may be your best option if you have it available to you.

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    Zelle is my go-to method for electronically sending money to people, since my bank is part of the consortium. Even if your or your nephew's bank isn't, there's an app for transferring money.
    – RonJohn
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 19:09

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