Hello, world. We are the team at StashUp, a start-up with a vision to demystify financial planning for everyone. StashUp began with an idea: to remove the barriers put in place that prevent us, all of us, from achieving financial freedom and security.
Financial planning and literacy are learned through exposure. For some, they learned from their parents, who themselves were familiar with concepts like a 401(k), an IRA, or individual investment accounts. They knew the complexities and rules necessary to invest and save sensibly and how to build a nest egg, and they passed that knowledge on.
But, for many more, there are few opportunities to learn these essential skills. Not everyone is born into a family with good financial fundamentals, and society tends to stigmatize discussions about money, leaving many with little idea of how to save, invest, and financially plan.
Without role models and teachers to explain these concepts, many have opted out of investing or saving, or find themselves unable to afford to do either. Today, 42% of Americans age 18-29 have no retirement savings whatsoever. According to a recent survey, 63% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck during COVID, leaving little money to commit to savings or retirement.
We hope to fix that
Our team looked around and saw two distinct kinds of apps on the market: budgeting apps and payment apps. The budgeting apps allow individuals to adjust their “budgets” before the spend occurs, but provide nothing in the way of controls to actually limit that spending. They rely on constant awareness of your spending and adjustments to the data to correct spending categories, which both make for a painful, difficult, and time-consuming experience. The payment apps, on the other hand, encourage and benefit from users spending more money, which runs counter to the purpose of a budgeting app.
So, we asked the question, why not have both? Our vision is to create a budgeting app that allows you to set your budgets at the beginning and create powerful controls to limit your spending by embedding the payment process into the product.
StashUp will help people create budgets that stick. Users pick the stores where they want to save money, set a budget limit, and we create a virtual card with exactly the amount of money you want to spend there. At the end of the month, the remaining funds roll back into your bank account or a savings vehicle, making your financial future healthier. It’s that simple.
Right now, we have our sleeves rolled up building this tool that we think will meaningfully improve the lives of millions. If this sounds like a journey you’d like to be a part of, we encourage you to follow us on our social media channels, subscribe to our newsletter, or reach out to us for more information. When a beta comes to market, you’ll be the first to know.
Thank you for joining us. Let’s work together to make financial security a reality for not just the few, but for everyone.