Brian comes to rescue in rows over teen spending

City Lives – Denise McNamara meets Brian Silke of the unique money management system miDough

You know teenagers, goes the advert. Always on a device, always downloading the latest game.Inevitably that obsession leads to a heartfelt plea for a parent’s credit card.

And so the battle begins.

It was in this fractious environment that the idea was conceived for miDough.com, an online money management system aimed at teenagers.

A teenager can sign up for free for an account, which has to be done with the consent of parents. They get a virtual prepaid Mastercard and can use it to make online purchases.

As the parents of four teenage boys, Brian Silke and his wife Catherine found there was some discord every time a request for their credit card was made. Mainly it was football boots and clothes that were the subject of their shopping interest.

“They were very happy researching stuff online and they’d always promise to pay it back. But of course often you’d forget about it,” recalls Brian.

“I just don’t like giving out my credit card. Generally they were responsible purchases. They weren’t doing anything wrong but we’d end up having a row. We’d have a limit on the amount to spend say on football boots and you’d be asking how much did you give for them the last time, or when did you last buy them. It was always a source of tension.”

It was Catherine who first voiced her contention that there had to be a better way to manage their money.

Brian looked around online for a solution, but found none. There was one system in the UK which charges parents £2 per month to hold an online account for their child, another American concept was set up based on the parent’s credit card.

“What we wanted to do is teach fundamental independence and responsibility. None of these fit the bill,” he reveals.

It sowed a seed in his brain. There could well be a business idea here.

It was 2010 and Brian had just sold his business Go Play, one of the country’s biggest developers of kids’ playgrounds.

Founded by the native of Belclare along with Wexford man Tom Foley in 2001 – the pair had a joint wedding a decade before they set up the business when they married two sisters from Wexford – it came about when they identified a lack of play facilities for children in villages and towns across pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

The duo started in trampolines and domestic swings before securing the exclusive rights to products from the Danish company Kompan after a chance meeting at a trade fair. Kompan is the subsidiary of Lego and a European leader in children’s equipment.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.