Ask Tanya Van Court, CEO and founder of the family and kids savings app Goalsetter, about the challenge of gaining financial literacy in America, and she’ll talk about learning a foreign language. The Stanford engineering graduate and daughter of an Oakland, California, elementary school teacher, Van Court believes that without financial literacy fundamentals, today’s kids can’t learn the tools they need to bridge the wealth gap and ultimately be successful in their futures.
“Financial language is a foreign language, and the more we withhold it from certain populations, the more they are on the outside of certain circles and are destined to economic extinction,” Van Court says. “To reverse that, Goalsetter is teaching the language in a fun, relevant way, so that we can create circles that every kid in America can be on the inside of when they grow up.”
Van Court is just one of a handful of developers and founders whose apps on the App Store pave the way for generations of historically disadvantaged people, including Black and Brown kids and their families, college-bound young adults, and women, to secure their financial freedom. From Goalsetter to Perch Credit, the credit-building app that turns 21st-century expenses into creditworthy data points, to Ellevest, a financial app designed for women by women, generations of Americans are taking their financial journeys into their own hands — literally.
