Products

CentsCity, GetFitCity, Citizen’s Square…

Our flagship product is CentsCity – an online destination packed with games that teach teens and tweens financial skills as they earn rewards from their parents, teachers, and out-of-school providers. We expect to develop additional products applying Skill-Life’s platform, which incorporates video, interactive quizzes, assessment tools, and real-life rewards. Future applications will focus on nutrition, citizenship, and other life skills.

Why CentsCity from the start?

As the United States faces the current economic crisis, the need for financial education has never been clearer. High school seniors correctly answered fewer than half of the questions on a 2008 test of basic finance knowledge by the Jump$tart Coalition. Teens surveyed by Teenage Research Unlimited reported spending 97% of their money instead of saving it! Sallie Mae found that more than half of college students accumulated more than $5,000 in credit card debt while in school. Meanwhile, total US consumer debt reached $2.5 trillion in December 2008, up from $2.191 trillion at the end of 2004. (Source: Federal Reserve). 93% of people ages 18‐39 do not feel financially secure (The American Savings Education Council).

More recently, a market has emerged for financial education resources.  Forty-two states now have personal finance education standards, doubling from twenty-one in 1998. A 2007 study of K‐12 teachers by the Networks Financial Institute revealed that 8 in 10 teachers think it is important to teach financial literacy in U.S. classrooms, while 91% of parents say they support requiring financial education be taught in every high school in the country (Visa 2007 Back to School Cardholder Survey). In our own market study, 74% of parents ranked “managing money” first or second in a list of life skills they consider important to teach their children.  Eighty percent of parents said they would be interested or very interested in a product to teach their child financial skills.

This is where we come in. Through an innovative virtual setting and user experience, CentsCity provides adults and youth a fun, effective, and easily‐accessible tool to increase young people’s financial savvy while giving and earning rewards.