DID YOU KNOW: 76% of young adults can't pass a basic financial literacy test?
Three out of four high school grads will be in debt within a year and don't know how to do real-life financial tasks like opening a bank account, buying or leasing a car, or budgeting for groceries. Financial literacy for high school students is at an all-time low.
GravyStack can help parents and other caregivers with the financial literacy issue through our leading money management game.
Most kids and teens aren't taught to manage their finances at school, so it falls on parents to pick up the slack. But parents and other caregivers don't have the time, knowledge, or resources to tackle the task. Even if they have the time and knowledge, kids learn better when someone other than their primary caregiver tries to teach them something. That's where GravyStack, our educational app for teens and kids, comes in.
Young people find out how to earn, save, and manage their money through independent learning that they're actually excited to do. When education happens through a fun personal finance game, it sticks. GravyStack is designed by subject matter experts, overseen by child psychologists, and gamified by behavioral learning game specialists who understand the science of FUN.
Through our whole family personal finance app, kids learn how to create value and earn money instead of just waiting for their allowance. By building an in-home economy, GravyStack came up with a way to stop the whining, begging, and fighting that standard allowance and chore models teach.
Parents spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on stuff their kids could and should buy for themselves if they had an income stream, including birthday presents for friends, movie tickets, and special treats. Sheltering kids from the financial reality of everyday expenses and extras teaches kids to expect things to be provided for them at someone else's expense. And this is not how the real world works. No wonder 76% of them can't support themselves when they leave home.
The good news is that a straightforward switch can flip this whole concept on its head without adding extra time, stress, or expense to the family's already taxed lives. You can redirect the same funds you already spend on life’s “everyday extras” to something that will teach your kids responsibility, grit, independence, the concept of supply and demand, how to provide value to their community, and more.
You might think: My kids would freak if they had to buy this stuff themselves!
This might be true at first, but it's only because they have never experienced the thrill of financial independence before and have no idea how to make money for themselves. The confidence they get when they achieve what they want through their own efforts is priceless, and that is what will guide them on the right path in the long term.
GravyStack's Gigs can solve this!
You sit down as a family and decide what items and experiences you, as parents, will no longer pay for. You then decide where you want to reinvest that money in exchange for your children performing certain actions! They will immediately begin to see the direct connection between their efforts to provide value to the world around them and how this gives them the means to buy the things they want and accomplish any goal. Gigs give kids and parents a way to escape the traps that standard allowance and chores keep them in and provide freedom for everyone in the household.
GravyStack is built by busy parents for busy parents who want to set their kids on the path to financial freedom early. We're committed to helping you empower your kids to become self-sufficient, resilient adults who understand how money works. It's excellent preparation for building financial literacy in high school and beyond.