By Asad Ramzanali & Josh Sledge, Financial Health Network This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of you reading this post, but it is worth stating: Fintech has a diversity problem. Specific numbers for diversity in fintech are hard to nail down. But we do know that both technology and finance have a significant…

This post is a follow-on to our recently released Financial Solutions Lab Snapshot, a report in which we identified industry insights, trends, and analyses based on Financial Solutions Lab’s 356 applicants in 2016. In this post, we’ll share more of our funding related applicant data and call out what we think these data imply. As we […]

By Tyler Griffin I think one of the most interesting tensions in our world of fintech exists between building a product that our customers love and building a product that is good for our customers. Much ink has been spilled about the tension between building a successful business and doing good; that is well trod…

By Aja McClahanan I’m a child of the 80s and came of age in the 90s. If you don’t know much about that time period, I’ll sum it up for you: the rise pop culture consumerism. Rappers, ball players and other larger-than-life personalities defined success for us in terms of the “bling.” The more diamond-encrusted…

By Steven M. Hughes LET’S REWIND. I’m a freshman in college, hungry for food and new experiences as I’m walking across the library bridge. From one end to the other are tables filled with coupons for free pizza, subs and credit cards (one of these things are not like the others). Shortly after all the…

By Stephanie Jones Have you ever avoided going to the doctor about an ache or pain simply because you were afraid of what the diagnosis might be? That happens with finances too. In fact, that was totally me three years ago. While my husband was in law school, I knew our debt was mounting, but…

By Bobbi Dempsey Growing up in severe poverty, smart financial skills aren’t something you learn. I say that from personal experience. Survival is the main goal, and you do anything necessary just to get your hands on enough food to make it through the day. You have a very negative view of — and relationship with — money, as…

What does financial health mean to me? If only I were presented with that question eighteen years ago when I was a young man entering the United States Army, maybe I wouldn’t have made some of the mistakes I have made in the area of my finances.

By Joshua Sledge, Director, Financial Health Network After a relaxing Labor Day weekend, I settled back into work last Tuesday morning by scanning for industry news. Everywhere I looked — my Twitter feed, the company Slack channel, Google News — I kept seeing the same article pop up with a thought-provoking headline: “Sex ed is required. Why isn’t financial…

By Tai Stewart Ever since I can remember, my dad was always the financial manager in our household. He knew how to support 8 kids and a wife on less than $40,000, and we didn’t lack any basic necessities. As the eldest child, I was the recipient of most of the financial lessons since I…

How to Value the True Cost of a Loan How should we measure the true value of a loan on consumers’ lives? Lower blood pressure, for the anxiety and stress saved? The dollar amount of an additional payday, because someone could afford to repair the car and get to work? The quality of life achieved…

By Amanda K. Lettmann Disability comes quickly and very unexpectedly. One moment you are healthy, another moment you are having open heart surgery — at least that’s what happened to me. In the early 1990’s, I learned dearly the importance of having sound financial health. At the time I was 29, an avid runner, cyclist, and fitness…