Creating habits that build a future
This is the February 14, 2023 edition of the Opportunity Miami newsletter written by Matt Haggman, which we send every Tuesday. Click here to subscribe to get our weekly updates in your inbox.
Featured Content
Q&A with Evan Leaphart
Read how Kiddie Kredit teaches about credit through chores and how Black Men Talk Tech builds up the Black tech community
Credit can be a blessing but also a curse. It’s built futures for generations of families by allowing the purchase of a home, creating wealth, and providing a foundation for life. But it can also create barriers that obstruct dreams and stifle a person’s aspirations for decades.
Enter Kiddie Kredit. It’s a Miami-based company with a mission to create credit-healthy families with the belief that credit, when used properly, “is one of the greatest tools to generate wealth.”
Kiddie Kredit takes the long view. Namely, it’s created a mobile app for children focused on fun ways to teach financial literacy at a young age. It teaches fundamentals like what goes into a credit score and the importance of creating habits that establish good credit. The app encourages good habits by giving children credit for doing daily chores.
“Studies show that between the ages of seven and nine is really when you start to form your habits around money,” said Evan Leaphart, Founder, and CEO of Kiddie Kredit. “So if you start the conversation too late, it’s already too late. And some of the things I did as a young kid carried over into adulthood, and they can be very hard to break. So it’s just important to start earlier.”
Leaphart joined us for the latest Opportunity Miami Q&A. This is part of our ongoing series where Barry University students sit down with people focused on building Miami’s future. You can read the Q&A here.
Credit sits at the core of many life events: buying a home, getting a car, and taking out a loan to support a small business. But it goes beyond that. According to Leaphart, good financial literacy can lead to “improved health, higher self-esteem, and stronger relationships.”
It’s with the aim of using tech to solve long-standing social inequities that Leaphart is also the co-founder of Black Men Talk Tech.
Black Men Talk Tech held its fourth annual conference here in Miami in October. Through panels, workshops, and conversations, the aim is to create new ways to drive access, share learnings, and expand personal networks.
“A lot of times, we come from environments where the folks around us aren’t necessarily in tech,” said Leaphart, who added: “So Black Men Talk Tech has been cool because it really brings us all in one room, allows us to celebrate each other, and then builds upon and strengthens each other’s networks.”
In focusing on the future, Opportunity Miami is also leaning into climate and the transition to a net zero economy as a key part of our growth. With that in mind, we will gather for our fifth Opportunity Miami x Miami-Dade County Climate Tech Meetup on Feb 28. You can register for that here.
As always, we would love to hear from you. You can share ideas about people building the Miami of 2040 we want by emailing us at next@opportunity.miami. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you could subscribe here. We invite you to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on social media channels.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Matt
