An introduction to Saveboost
And why are we creating it
The process of pursuing an idea, converting it in a project and later in a company is not an easy one. Many obstacles emerge and naturally it’s much easier to do nothing or play it safe. That’s the reason “why” you do something is more relevant than the “what” you are doing.
In a serie of posts I’m going to explain our motivations and how we are creating Saveboost, a simple service to help you save effortless.
The background
Growing up in Brazil in the 80s was an interesting experience. The country was in such dramatic economic situation that it was considered normal to update the supermarket prices twice in the same day. Inflation was huge and the salaries low. Just to illustrate how chaotic it was during the 80s, since I was born in 1984, Brazil used 6 different currencies!
- Cruzeiro, 1984
- Cruzado, 1986
- Cruzado Novo, 1989
- Cruzeiro, 1990
- Cruzeiro Real, 1993
- Real, 1994
A lot of families broke apart in that period due to the pressure of being in a continuous bad financial situation. Unemployment and debt were high, adding even more stress to people’s life. How do you manage to maintain a minimum quality of life for your family when prices are going up daily? It was not easy and a very basic idea emerged from that period:
One of the foundations of a person’s happiness is financial stability.
A basic human need
In 1943 Abraham Maslow wrote “A Theory of Human Motivation” where he proposed how human motivation works and evolves.
The most fundamental and basic four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called “deficiency needs” or “d-needs”: esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. If these “deficiency needs” are not met, the individual will feel anxious and tense. Maslow’s theory suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs.
What Maslow says is that independent of people’s origin or beliefs , (financial) safety is one of the most basic human needs and must be met before other superior needs.
During 2016 we interviewed several people, from walks of life and a variety of age groups to try to understand how they manage their money, how much they save and most importantly what were their aspirations (self-realization and self-esteem) in relation to money. Not a single person told us that were satisfied with their personal financial management. People were not complaining about their income itself, but they were not satisfied with their financial education. During those conversations there was one common theme:
Managing money is one of the most important things and nobody is talking about it. Everybody takes it for granted.
Maybe everybody takes it for granted because it’s just hard and complex to manage money. Or is it because the results of your hard work would only show in the long term? Or maybe because financial safety is such a basic need that in 2017 we were already supposed to have it figured out.
A global problem
The more we talked with people from different countries, clear it became that stressful situations cause by economic problems were not only a Brazilian thing. Millions are suffering from student loan debt in the USA and in Spain historic unemployment rates (young adults >25%) are dragging down a whole generation. It’s more apparent than ever that financial instability is a big problem affecting millions of people all over the world.
How many do you know that are living month by month; financially scratching the limit and not thinking long term, susceptible to get burned by an unexpected situation?
The good thing is that we now have access to all information we need to learn and solve this problem. We can read any book we want, we can study and apply the best practices from experts all around the world and take action today. The problem is that doing it is extremely difficult. The amount of available information in reality makes it impossible to actually start. Besides financial concepts are a nightmare to grasp and even more difficult to put into practice.
Changing our habits is also another huge task. We need to battle our habits, impulses and temptations. The easiest thing to do when it comes to our finance is…well, doing absolutely nothing.
Until today. 😉
A simple service to help you save effortless
We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but we know it can get better. Why do people need to live on the edge and chocked on financial instability and pressure? Why can’t we seek and obtain those stability and security needs mentioned by Maslow? Fortunately the solution is not that complex nor difficult to reach. You just need to save.
It doesn’t matter how small is the amount you set aside, even if it’s limited to saving a few cents here and there. 20 cents? Great! Big things start small.
We are building Saveboost to help people who have always struggled to save, so they can effortlessly step onto the savings path. That’s our first goal and we’re confident that we can do significantly better job than the available tools out there. We’re set out to offer an amazing service that can actually help people attain a better financial life. We’re going to help Juan, Alice, or Giacomo set aside and put to work, 24, 56, 75 cents at a time, rather than losing them in the pocket holes.
And much like those savings that start small, we believe this is just the beginning of the Saveboost story. Big things start small.
Check www.saveboost.com.
