44.7 million Americans have student loan debs, according to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The total amount of student loan debt is a grand total of 1.47 trillion dollars! What does this mean? That we are all victims of student debt and that something must be done to help the future.
According to a study done by Microsoft, the average human being now has attention span of 8 seconds. This is a sharp decrease from the year 2000, when it was 12- seconds. If we continue on this path, what will become of the human brain in another 20 years?
We believe that these two studies have a correlation. What if the financial world was geared towards the new generation of short attention spans, and social media? We believe that by raising awareness in the college years for the importance of financial planning and budgeting, it will aid in bad financial planning and possible student debts after graduation. We want to combine the corporate and intimidating financial world with the fun and quick paced college life.
How will we do this?
We wanted to play to this generation by using the websites they are already familiar with; webpages and apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Webpages that are face paced, that are quick, that’s just a scroll. These are successful because it is an outlet in which teens and tweens can interact, relate to one another and constantly scroll, thereby keeping their attention spans in tact. Therefore, we decided to come up with College Guardian. This is starting off as a mobile sharing webpage, and will soon after become an app, which will simplify big financial concepts within memes and relatable posts. Whoever logs onto College Guardian will be asked to make an account with a username, and optional profile picture and bio. Users will be encouraged to post pictures, gifs, and short videos on the site with only relatable “college life budget” posts. Pictures examples includes a girl with her pizza dinner explaining how she was unable to afford a fancier meal because of her college life, hacks on how to get the best deals, etc. Posts will be humorous and the goal will be to connect college students from all over the world all going through the struggle of a college budget.
The catch
Instead of mindlessly scrolling through posts, which are argumentatively a waste of time, College Guardian is productive, informative, and helpful for ones future.
Workers and financial advisors part of Guardian will sign up to be mentors and make profiles of their own. They will post informative content, creating a relationship with college students and young adolescents, who will eventually graduate and therefore turn to their already trustee mentors for help on how to now budget and invest in real world. The mentors will gain new clients in the younger generation by appealing to their current needs, and the young generation will gain advanced knowledge from professionals in Guardian on how to better manage their finances. The humorous and social home page is geared to attract college students to sign up and want to be apart of the movement. Yet once they sign up, they will soon become sophomores and juniors and realize how much potential the site has to offer for them and their futures. College students will now graduate in professional hands. Furthermore, on the nav there is an option of Videos. This will include short videos posted by the financial mentors on how to budget and tips about all things finance.
The third option on the nav is Share. This is all about real people and students who have been on the program and have been helped by the mentors and they are now sharing their story how they were helped, how they are now budgeting, etc. All this once again to give users a sense of relate-ability and show them how this program really can work for regular students just like them.
The fourth option on the nav is the Mentorship option.
This will the page that will allow people to contact mentors directly, helping them find the best fit for them and start working together.
Lastly, there is a FAQ”s page for any questions still to be had.
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