After two successful fundraising rounds attracting star athletes like Kevin Durant and Chris Paul, along with giants of the financial world, a fintech aims to expand its reach in wealth management.
Former Nickelodeon executive Tanya Van Court launched
At a cost of $3.95 for a basic account and $5.95 for a “Goalsetter Gold” membership that includes the new investment feature it added last year, the fintech offers parents, advisors and companies a new method of building financial literacy in families and organizations.
In recognition of Women’s History Month, Financial Planning Chief Correspondent Tobias Salinger spoke with Van Court about her plans for working with more wealth managers and financial advisors and how the firm aims to help kids get past the many barriers affecting financial literacy in the country. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
FP: Goalsetter has raised $19 million in investments after
Tanya Van Court: It is super exciting. The thing that I think has been so gratifying for us is that, as so many of your listeners know, there are extraordinary investors in the NBA and in the NFL. I mean, we have people like Russell Okung who really elevated the conversation about Bitcoin in the country. While he's not a Goalsetter investor, just yet, Russell, we're coming for you. We have athletes who are truly leading conversations about financial wellness, about investment, about next-generation investment. Chris Paul and Kevin Durant are both extraordinary investors in their own right. They have multimillion-dollar funds that they're investing in companies all across the country that are doing lots of interesting things. So to have luminaries like Chris Paul and Kevin Durant, but also billionaire philanthropists like Robert F. Smith and then outstanding corporations like U.S. Bank and PNC Bank and Fiserv to raise their hands and say, “We believe in Goalsetter's mission, and we want to be a part of it, and we want to support it coming to life,” it's super exciting.
FP: What metrics are you able to share for the number of accounts and assets on Goalsetter?
Van Court: We have more than a quarter of a million accounts on Goalsetter. We can't share asset data right now, but what I will say is that some of the accounts have $20 in them. Some of the accounts have thousands of dollars in them. And so we are really accomplishing what we came to this space to accomplish, which is, we want every kid and family in America to be a saver and an investor.
It doesn't matter to us if you've only got $20 in that account, because what's truly most important is that kids who have savings accounts in their name are six times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to own stocks by the time they're 25 years old. So if we can get these kids to save early, invest early, or do both, we are fundamentally transforming outcomes, whether [or not] they're coming from a family that is wealthy already. It is commonly known in the financial services industry that the average inheritance is spent within five years. It's also commonly known that 90% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the third generation.
When you can truly transform how kids are thinking about money and get them to have an appreciation for saving money toward goals and giving up smaller things in favor of something larger and the key tenants of building wealth like the
FP: Teaching finance to adults is difficult, let alone children, considering all that is involved with money and access to financial literacy in our country. Plus it’s a “boring topic” and it involves your parents. How does Goalsetter keep children’s attention and help them past all of the barriers surrounding money?
Van Court: I remember when I used to work at ESPN and it was in the advent of all things going digital, and everyone said, “Oh my goodness, it's the end of the ad era, right? Everything is going onto a digital format. So there won't be a television where we have to watch ads anymore.” But the truth of the matter was, it wasn't the end of the era of ads. It just meant that ads had to get better. And it meant that people had to want to watch an ad because it was interesting and engaging and exciting. And the truth of the matter is, as we look at Super Bowl ads, people are clamoring for that content, right? I say that because the same is true of financial education. If you have boring financial education, you're absolutely right, no one wants to engage with it.
But if you have financial education that's interesting and engaging, you actually have a set of content that people want almost more than they want any content in America. You can go and ask a whole group of adults or kids, put 'em all in a room together and say, “How many of you like science?” Half of them will raise their hands. “How many of you like reading?” The other half will raise their hands. “How many of you like money?” I guarantee everyone in the room is going to raise their hands. So yes, everyone is interested in money, but no one wants to learn about something — I don't care if it's science or English or money — when it's presented in a boring fashion. The problem is that, in America, we've never really infused fun and entertainment and gamification into this money space.
But my background is that I come from Discovery Education. I come from ESPN, and I have four kids who just will not allow me to make anything boring. They're like, “No, Mom. Next.” So, you know, it challenges us. And my background challenges us every day to say, “How can we do better? Or how do we bring education, gamification and entertainment into this world together in a way that they are married, in a way that they make finance fun to learn.” So just as a couple of examples, one thing we do is we use memes and gifs from popular culture to explain key financial education concepts. So when Beyoncé says, “Can you pay my bills? Can you pay my telephone bills?” We use that to explain Beyoncé wouldn't need anyone to pay her bills. If she would just save for an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, Beyoncé could pay for her own bills.
We think that there's enough popular culture out there that is laced and laden with talk about money that we can use those for real-world lessons about managing money, about building wealth, about not overspending. So that's one thing that we do.
The second thing that we do is, we have all of our quizzes broken down from kindergarten through 12th grade, and even quizzes for the adults in the family. So no matter what level you're entering at, we meet you where you are. And then the third thing is, we add an additional layer of gamification to that. So with our quizzes, we have a rule called “learn before you burn.” So if you give your teen or tween a Goalsetter debit card, that debit card will automatically freeze on Sunday morning if they haven't taken their financial literacy quiz yet. And the minute they take that quiz, the card will unfreeze again.
If a parent doesn't quite want to be like I am, then a parent can use the other rule, which is “learn to earn.” And this is the incentive-based rule that says, for every quiz question your kid gets right, they'll get an additional payment from you. So it could be, I'm going to give you a quarter for every quiz question you get right. We only open up 10 quiz questions a week. Kids have to score eight, nine or 10 on this week's quiz in order to open up the following week's quiz, but they can get paid for up to those 10 questions by their parent, with our "learn to earn" rule. And finally, we give kids a "credit lit" score instead of a credit score. And that credit lit score is essentially measuring their financial aptitude. So it's super fun. It's super engaging and it's engaging to kids of all ages, parents of all ages and the entire family.
We want every kid and family in America to be a saver and an investor.
FP: Goalsetter is a part of the “One Stock. One Future” program started by Robert F. Smith of Vista Equity Partners. How does the program work?
Van Court: We have put a stake in the ground, as you said, in conjunction with Robert F. Smith to get a million Black and Latino kids to be investors. And what we are doing with that program is, we are challenging corporations across the country to sponsor 1,000 kids. If 1,000 corporations sponsor 1,000 kids, we can cover 1 million kids, and we can get those kids not only stock in their very own account that unlocks when they turn 18, but they can see it grow over that whole period of time. We can give them stock in their own account, but we can also give them financial education for a three-year period over which this sponsorship happens.
And so every week they're learning about insurance and risk and investing and real estate and the Rule of 72 and compound interest. They're learning about all of these key concepts for 156 weeks in a row while they are being sponsored by a corporation that says, “Yes, it's important for them to physically own assets, but it's also important for them to understand, theoretically, the key components behind building wealth.”
And so we are really proud that there are corporations like UBS and Twitter and Comcast and Delta Airlines and HP that have all been sponsors of this effort. And we're talking to a number of other extraordinary companies about coming into this effort and continuing to sponsor kids all across America and, and in many instances, right in their own backyards.
FP: When did Goalsetter add the investment capability, and how does it work?
Van Court: We added the investment capability in late 2021. And the investment capability is so fantastic because it allows for any member of the family to have an investment account, a brokerage account where they can trade full shares or fractional shares of stocks and ETFs. So a kid, as an example, could have their own Goalsetter Invest account. They could say, “Hey, I really love Nike, or I really love Amazon, or I really love Apple. And so I want to spend my allowance money buying some of that stock. Well, Nike's trading at a little bit more than my allowance money will cover right now. So how about I buy $10 of Nike stock.” So they can place that trade themselves. They can get accustomed to understanding what it means to own a piece of the stock market and trade in the stock market. But when they place that trade, it goes to their parent for approval. Their parent either approves it or declines it.
But the other thing that that kid gets is all throughout the Goalsetter Invest app, there's an education mode. And when you turn the education mode on, any term that the kid doesn't understand will light up. So let's say that “market price” is lit up. I can press the play button next to it. Up will pop a short TikTok-like video that says, “Hey, you don't know what market price means. Don't worry about it. Just imagine your friend comes over (to) your house and wants to sell you a pair of Nike sneakers. The market price is the price of those sneakers right now.” Well a share of Nike stock isn't that much different than a pair of Nike sneakers. The market price of a share of Nike stock is the price of that stock on the stock market right now. And so we are inviting them in with language that makes sense to them with analogies that resonate with them. And the truth of the matter is, we're getting a lot of adults, too, who are saying, “Wow, I've never really understood the stock market. I've always wanted to invest and have been intimidated, too. And this gives me that onramp to do so from myself as well.”
FP: What banks or other institutions are currently enterprise clients of yours with white-labeled versions of Goalsetter? Could you foresee wealth managers or even advisory practices using white-labeled versions of Goalsetter as well?
Van Court: That's such a great question because we literally have a number of different pilots that we are in the midst of right now, some with wealth managers, some with insurance companies, some with consumer banks. And so if you are a bank or financial institution, what do you need to do? You need to develop your next generation of clients. Right? As individual financial managers, you want to do that because when that grandparent passes on, you want to be able to have a consistent and continuous relationship with their kids and potentially even their grandkids. And so Goalsetter is really helping every financial institution to cultivate the next generation of their customers. And, yes, we absolutely believe that relationships with wealth managers make a lot of sense.
And let me tell you why. There are a few reasons. No. 1, as we talked about, 90% of wealthy adults lose their wealth by the third generation. No. 2, only 78% of wealthy adults trust their kids with an inheritance. No. 3, what are financial managers meant to do? They're meant to create and protect wealth for their clients.
Well, if you're creating that wealth, but then you're passing that wealth on to people who aren't knowledgeable about it and don't know what to do with it, then in essence, you're really not protecting it because the minute that it changes hands, it's scattering into the ether. And so a real way of protecting wealth for those clients is by introducing a tool like Goalsetter, where their kids and their grandkids can all start to have conversations about money and understand money in ways that they never did before, so that they can be financially responsible when that inheritance comes, so that they can learn those money lessons during life.
We had the best story ever. There was actually a guy who called me. He was in California, his granddaughter was in New York and he got Goalsetter for his granddaughter. He calls every Sunday, and they get on the phone and do our financial literacy quiz together. And it is their bonding moment, but it's also his way of saying, “Look, my kids didn't really have good financial literacy because no one taught them. And I didn't have a tool like Goalsetter to teach them, but I'm going to make sure that my grandkids have good financial literacy.”
And so it is really a great tool that is a multigenerational tool to engage the whole family around these conversations, to prepare and protect your clients and their wealth for generations to come, and then to really just create another stickiness factor. Who wants to move away from their financial advisor if that financial advisor has a relationship with their favorite person in the world — their grandkid? So, yes, we think it makes sense for all of those reasons. And we're super excited to talk to more wealth managers, more advisors and get Goalsetter into the hands of all the families that they serve.
FP: In recognition of women’s history month, who are some of the figures who have inspired you as a female fintech founder?
Van Court: I've got a couple. We have a partnership with U.S. Bank, and we just recently launched Goalsetter as an employee benefit. Ninety-two percent of the employees came back and said that they value Goalsetter as an employee benefit. Ninety-two percent came back and said that they prefer learning financial education through Goalsetter over classroom learning.
And all of this data came from the department of a woman who has been our partner there, and her name is [Chief Administrative Officer for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] Maxine Swayne. And so when I talked to you about the soldiers on the ground who are saying, “Our organization needs to do something that is monumental, that is groundbreaking, that is changing the conversation about wealth and who should have access to wealth,” it's Max who's standing there at the front of that line, doing the work every day that is not sexy or glorious or getting a lot of shine and attention, but she's doing the work that is really making a difference. So Maxine is one.
And then the second that I would say is Carla Harris, the vice chair of Morgan Stanley. She was an early advisor to Goalsetter. And there's not a piece of advice that she has provided that has been off-base. She is clairvoyant. She is brilliant. She is a supporter. She is a door-opener. She is a strategist, and she has just been such a monumental part of our success. And I am forever grateful to her. I love International Women's History Month because there are so many women to celebrate. I feel like I could go on and on.
