The Tooth Fairy App

How much should the tooth fairy pay per tooth? There's an app for that! See if you're paying below market rate for your children's teeth:

Kids found an average $3 per tooth under their pillows this year, up 15% from last year, according to a survey from Visa out Tuesday. Some received as much as $20 per tooth. "It's a good time to be a kid with a loose tooth," says Jason Alderman, Visa's senior director of global financial education. [...]

Unfortunately, teachers say, tooth inflation is all too common in elementary schools. Nobody wants to be the parent whose child is "the talk at recess," because of a frugal Tooth Fairy, says Amy Moncarz, a second-grade teacher at Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Discrepancies in tooth price can lead to a conversation parents might want to avoid: the existence of the Tooth Fairy itself.

To help parents calculate the going rate for teeth, Visa on Tuesday is launching an app for iPhone and iPad and a calculator on its Facebook page. The app uses the survey's data to determine the average payoff a child can expect based on a parent's gender, education, location, age and income.

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