New to Financial Literacy? There’s an App For That

For young people, particularly in high school or college, the ins and outs of managing money may be somewhat foreign. Most public schools don’t offer courses in personal finance anymore, and in college, such courses are electives at best. However, financial literacy is crucial to survival in the modern world. Young people especially need to develop skills like budgeting, paying bills on time, and regular savings if they want to reach financial stability and be prepared to apply for loans and credit cards. Luckily for these technology natives, there are several smartphone apps that can help build and nurture these skills.

Better Money Habits by Bank of America and Khan Academy. Millennials love nothing more than a YouTube tutorial. This video series walks viewers through the the basics of bank accounts, budgeting, balancing checkbooks, etc, which are all crucial pieces of knowledge for any person.

Left to Spend: A beautiful minimalist app, Left to Spend visualizes your budget into committed money, bills, and, as the name suggests, what’s left to spend. For visual learners, this app beautifully displays, in bar graphs, where your money is going and the remainder you can spend at your discretion. This is an especially useful app for college students who are just learning about budgeting their money.  

LearnVest: With this app, a financial planner is always at your fingertips. LearnVest is an all-in-one location for calculating your net worth, planning for long-term goals, suggesting insurance plans, and offering news and practical advice for your financial prosperity.  

Prosper Daily: Formerly BillGuard, this app analyzes your spending, calculates your credit score, and stores all of the data from all your cards and accounts into one place to help you see where your money goes and how your activities contribute to your scores and goals. With more young students opening credit card accounts these days, this app can be incredibly valuable, allowing users to maintain their credit early on, in order to prevent themselves from winding up in any unnecessary debt. 
With tangible apps like these, young people can get a handle early on how to manage their money wisely and plan for their futures.

Most Important Startups of 2016

What are the most important startups of 2016? The truth is it is really difficult to say. Sources are not all in full agreement on this subject. There are, however, some companies who make multiple lists. Here then, in no particular order, are those important startups:

Belong

Belong is a talent acquisition business based in Bangalore, India. It was founded in 2014 by Sudheendra Chilappagari, Rishabh Kaul, Saiteja Veera, and Vijay Sharma. They scan the internet, social media, and various other public sources to find potential candidates for specific jobs. Their investors, Blume Ventures and Matrix Partners, sunk $5 million into the company. They currently employ almost 70 people.

Carousell

The Republic of Singapore-based company Carousell was founded in 2012. Carousell is reportedly a simple, convenient way to sell underused and unused property. It is said to be as simple as Snap, List and Sell. Users can also shop, chat live and purchase items all via the Carousell app. There are millions of things to choose from at any given time. The Carousell investors include Sequoia Capital, Golden Gate Ventures and 500 Startups.

Inverse

Inverse is a San Francisco Bay Area-based company in California. Founded in 2015, it is a technology-driven media business. They cover current digital culture, motion pictures, music, news, science, television and innovations skewed to a mainly millennial male audience. Some of the companies who currently are invested in Inverse include Crosslink Capital, Greycroft Partners, and Rothenberg Ventures. The business currently employs approximately 30 people.

Mobcrush

Founded in 2014, Mobcrush is a mobile community and live game streaming platform. Mobcrush was formed with the precept that they could provide inspiration to many different people throughout the world via their mobile device-related games and software. They received $15 million worth of investment funds from CrunchFund, Kleiner Perkins, and Lowercase Capital.

Patreon

This San Francisco Bay Area-based company in California was founded in 2013. Alexis Ohanian or Sam Altman’s began the company with more than $17 million of fundraising money. Patreon is essentially a platform that permits content creators like artists, authors, musicians, photographers and YouTubers to create web pages for their work and solicit support from fans. The community currently includes more than 2,000 creators. They have more than 40 employees.

Product Hunt

Launched in 2013, Product Hunt is a website that allows users to share and discover new products on a daily basis. Some pundits believe this is one of the most significant platforms of the year. Apparently, both venture capitalists and those in the tech industry use the website to learn about new startups. Now business people use the site to launch their new products. Their big investors include Greylock Partners, Naval Ravikant, and SV Angel.

Coolest Technology in the Classroom

Technology is a valuable resource the world over. In education and the classroom specifically, it is a path-maker, leading students of all ages into the most advanced and effective learning environs ever seen. For those interested in learning about the latest and coolest technology available in the classroom today, I have a quick but telling run down on the current state of the art. While there is certainly more going on in this realm than I could possibly encompass here within a single blog, these following, in-use concepts tell us where we are as a whole right now.

Early Education PC’s

First, it’s only appropriate to pay a nod to the use of computers in virtually every classroom and school subject today. Years ago, this was just an aspiration, but today, computers really are found in every school and virtually every academic confine. With this said, early childhood education approaches in many schools are utilizing actual miniaturized PC’s for early learners.

The products utilized here vary greatly and are easily found throughout the market. Regardless, they all center around the theme of an interactive, handheld computer that utilizes a screen, sounds, preloaded, school subject-based, fun learning programs, and various controls for deep interaction. Yes, even those in and just emerging from toddler-hood now have regular access to computing power that rivaled the million-dollar machines of yesteryear.

Computerized Human Management Systems

In the classroom as well as in the school administrative office, we are seeing a boom in computerized human management systems. These types of systems track attendance, guest entrance into the school, guest entrance into the classroom, even bathroom trips and other activities in and around the classroom. Manual entry, barcode scanning, fingerprint identification, and other means of measurement are now being used quite regularly. Whether for security purposes or academics only, computerized tracking, the past fodder of sci-fi mags and movies is now daily reality in schools across America.

Mobile Tech

As opposed to being outlawed and ridiculed, mobile technology is now becoming much more embraced in the educational world. In the class, some students are now allowed to bring their mobile devices and use them for networking with the school, their teacher, or even outside educational venues. Teachers, students, and even parents can as well communicate quite freely as it turns out via this technology. For learning and communication, cell phones and other mobile technology, we’re finding, really isn’t all that bad.

VR

VR, also known as virtual reality is entering the classroom at a significant rate. So far, this technology has been mainly incorporated at the high school and college classroom levels, but will surely spread to the lower age groups with a little time. In these upper levels of education, the coolest and most eye-poppingly realistic experiences await students. Virtually dissect the human nervous system, study ecosystems and meteorology via a virtual flight, learn chemistry with booms and bangs that only happen virtually, or even visit an historical location without traveling a single mile.

The world of learning has never been so absolutely advanced. In ten years, I can only imagine what a similar article might look like reviewing the state of the art. This is where we are today and this is some of the coolest classroom tech in use that I know of right now.