LVLUP: Why We’re Launching
Danielle Tang, Derek Betances, Isaac Garcia
Alex gets home after a long day at work and hangs up her coat. She’s exhausted. As much as she would like to sit and rest her feet for a moment, she knows she can’t. Between juggling two jobs, she’s also a single mother, and she has to put food on the table for her little girl. She takes a breath and heads into the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Alex’s story isn’t so different from many others. In the US, the top 1% of families own more wealth than the bottom 92%, with the bottom 50% owning just 1% of the wealth. While the middle class shrinks, more Americans are falling on hard times, so why are the rich only getting richer? It turns out financial literacy varies almost as much as income distribution.
Wealthy families teach their children about managing their money from a young age. While investments and banking may be dinner table topics in some households, Alex’s parents had little experience themselves, and her public high school never offered personal finance classes. Without much background knowledge, it’s overwhelming and time-consuming trying to figure out where to begin looking for the right advice — never mind keeping up with new developments in the economy, such as Cryptocurrency and NFTs. This leaves Alex and millions of others around the country feeling like they can’t catch up.
An affordable and comprehensible financial education platform is needed now more than ever, and we weren’t going to wait any longer for someone else to step up. That’s why we created LVLUP.
LVLUP is an app-based service that provides module-based courses, videos, walkthrough forms, and other resources so people from any background can get started on understanding and managing their finances.
Our curriculum at face value isn’t too different from other platforms that promise knowledge. However, let’s take a moment to recognize that education is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. At LVLUP, we recognize the empowering effect of decolonized perspectives on education; we offer classes on financial literacy written by people of color who understand the complex ways education and finances are used as a class gateway. That’s to say, we will teach people how to understand the hidden rules of generating wealth and how to leverage Wall Street, cryptocurrency, and investments for the benefit of themselves and their families.
For a monthly subscription, users can take online classes at their own pace, meet with financial tutors for questions and advice, and access guided forms to help with anything from filing taxes to setting a weekly budget.
Our goal is to level the playing field by ensuring that everyone has the tools to build a stable future. We hope that LVLUP will help millions of Americans like Alex get on the path to financial freedom. We’re here to level the playing field, and we’re here to help.
