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You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival
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Financial Survival Network now more than ever,

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and welcome. You are listening to
watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your

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host, Carrie lets Well. Financial
education, or lack thereof, is one

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of the greatest problems confronting the United
States and the world for that matter,

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because the basic financial tools are generally
not taught in school. You learn them

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by the seat of your pants,
whether it's opening a bank account your parents

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take you to the bank for the
first time. I mean, I guess

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now on the internet you could open
up a PayPal account when you're But all

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these things you need to learn,
and there's no great way of teaching them.

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You know, guys like Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad or dad has made

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great strides and teaching you, but
the actual practical learning is still up to

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you. But there's a new app
called Kudosi. I've got the originator of

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it on with me now, Tyler
Nichols. Tyler, you're established software developer.

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He came across this concept. You
saw avoid in the market, and

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you said, you know what,
there's an app for that. Actually there's

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not an app, but I'll create
it. So you created an app to

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really teach all levels financial education.
Just give us a little background on you

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and how you came up with the
concept. Yeah, awesome, Thank you

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so much for having me. But
yeah, that's exactly right. I was

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doing some research a number of years
back and found that every year the United

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States is spending more and more money
on financial education, and in fact,

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in twenty twenty three, it's projected
we'll spend three point eight billion dollars on

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it across the economy. But what's
interesting is we also do studies to determine

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the financial literacy rates of the country, and our financial literacy rates are actually

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going down. So it's incredibly ironic
that we're trying to teach people how to

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spend money better, but yet we're
not spending that money very effectively. We're

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we're not actually moving that needle,
and so I wanted to help move that

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needle. I think that it's a
big problem for the country in the world

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at large, to your point,
and I also think like it's a big

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problem even for individuals. You look
at the statistics and something like twenty to

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forty of all divorces occur because of
financial issues, and it has the ability

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to tear apart families and all these
sorts of things. So I wanted to

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create a solution here. I saw
that there was a need and I wanted

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to come in. And as I
was doing that, I saw a couple

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observations and tried to like fill that
gap. So it's just like all other

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education in the United States were spending
more and more money on it and getting

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less and less of a return.
I'll tell you this, Okay, I'm

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going to relate this to personal thing
with me. Twelve years ago, I

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wanted to learn podcasting. Wasn't listening
to podcasts. There weren't a lot of

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people doing it then, And I
did an internet search and I find this

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guy, the podcast answer Man answer
Man, Cliff Ravenscraft. I sign up

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for his course. It was eight
hundred bucks. I found an affiliate link.

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It was a thousand, but I
found an affiliate link for eight hundreds,

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so I saved money. Right there, and it was an eight week

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course with basically getting on the what
was then the equivalent of a Zoom call.

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We didn't really have zoom that much
then and online there were like twelve

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of us and he went down the
basics of it. And prior to that,

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I was doing my podcast and I
was getting maybe thousand downloads a month,

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which I thought was incredible. Took
the course and overnight I'm getting twenty

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fifty hundred thousand downloads a month,
and that was like, they weren't teaching

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that stuff in college. Now they
teach podcasting in college, believe it or

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not. So the point is that
where the public education system fails, private

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private sector has jumped in with two
feet and you can learn more from these

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online courses then you can learn it
a semester in college. And so I

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think you're really on the right path
here. So what age groups is this

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aimed at? Yeah, so really
Kudosi is it's called Kudozi Family Wallet,

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and it's it's designed for the whole
family. It especially helps families with young

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kids. So kids that are ages
three to thirteen especially are really kind of

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a sweet spot for that app.
So they can learn at a young age

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the correct principles that will help them
the rest of their life. Yeah.

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So you know, like I one
time, go back. I'm a little

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bit older than you, and I
had an Apple two plus computer. I

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couldn't do much on it, but
it had it had this game called Lemonade

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Stand, and I had my niece
and nephew in my apartment, and basically

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you had to figure out how much
to spend on your stand, how much

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to spend on ingredients, what to
charge, and then when you screwed up,

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it went bank and you went bankrupt, and the whole Lemonade Stand like

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blew up. And I didn't realize
it then, but that was actually a

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financial education at its most rudimentary.
Yeah, absolutely, I there have been

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some interesting studies that showed like the
most effective way to learn financial principles is

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not death by PowerPoint, but hands
on experience doing it. And so Kudozi

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really aims to gamify the whole experience
and make it fun and interesting and compelling.

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So people are kind of in this
simulation, kind of trying to figure

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out how should I spend the currency
in the app and learn more about these

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financial principles, and I just told
my daughter about it, and she's got

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two kids five and two, and
perfectly. I got an ad for something

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similar on Instagram the other day.
I don't hate it. I think it's

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a great idea for kids seven to
fifteen, but you know, younger kids,

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you know, you learn about money
at a very early age, which

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is by necessity. So that's from
somebody in your demographic loves the concept,

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and so have you tried it out
on your own kids or test marketed it?

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How's that worked? Yeah? Absolutely
so. We have been using it

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with our family for about five years. I was using other apps and kind

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of trying to do what what Kudosi
eventually is now doing, and it is

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incredibly effective. So one thing that
I really love about it is, you

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know, we have to talk about
financial education in a very individualistic way.

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We even coined the term personal finance. But when you think about it,

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finances are really that personal, right. The way that I spend my money

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affects my wife and affects my kids. There's a whole ecosystem here and I

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can go learn all of these really
awesome financial principles. But if my wife

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goes out and spends a bunch of
money, on stuff that we're not good

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ahead or vice versa. She studies
the stuff and I go spend the money.

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We're not going to to move that
needle. So so yeah, so

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it's really designed to kind of have
get everyone in on the conversation and talking

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about these things and really making it
so everyone learns these principles together. Right

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And okay, so you're you're on
kids were the laboratory for this and now

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you've released it. When did you
release it? Yeah? So we're brand

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new. We were about four months
old. Now we've launched on Christmas Eve

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of last year. Well and wish
it the best here, so feedback that

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you've gotten reviews to give us a
glimpse of how it's being received. Yeah.

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So we have one hundred and fifty
or so families using the app.

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We have a perfect five star rating, and we are getting awesome reviews all

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the time. People are loving it
because what's also nice is it serves multiple

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issues. Right, So, on
one hand, it's important that we learn

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these financial principles because it will benefit
us for the rest of our lives.

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We all know this is important,
but oftentimes it doesn't feel urgent. What

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feels more urgent especially if you have
really young kids. Is I'm trying to

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work remotely on Zoom or whatever,
and my kids are just nagging me and

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driving me crazy and all these sorts
of things that is really urgent, right,

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And so what's awesome is this blends
the two together because within the app,

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kids can earn trudeaus, which are
this fictional currency within the app that

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the parents get to decide they have
a family economy that they get to control.

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And as the kids do good things, they behave well, they serve

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other people, they build their talents. Parents can give those kids kudos,

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which means you're able to have your
kids want to behave well, to do

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good things. And so parents are
finding their screaming last, Their kids are

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cleaning their room on their own,
they're doing all of these things. But

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then also they're getting the benefit of
the added benefit of learning these cool financial

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principles that will help them forever,
and they get to have more financial conversations.

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And it's just been super cool to
see all of these users, most

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of which I don't even know who
they are at this point, and it's

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just super exciting to see, you
know, they're seeing all the value of

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it and they've been given us awesome
reviews about it all right and so right

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now it's free, which is we
like that? That's our favorite for letter

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word on the people. Hey,
if you got a question for Tyler or

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mysel Off about this, shoot us
an email k l at Klutz dot com.

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The website who Dozy kudosy dot com. You'll find a link to it

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in the show notes this interview on
Financial Survival Network dot com. Like it?

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Let us know what you think about
it. I am intrigued by it.

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If you got grandchildren out there,
children, that's our demos a little

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older than new parents. But I
know there's a lot of you out there.

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Download it, lay it. Let
us know what you think they did

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it help? Did it make a
difference because you can't start financial literacy for

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your kids financial education soon enough.
Tyler, we want to reach you,

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connect with you on the web.
What's the best way to do that?

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Yeah, you can email me at
Tyler at krudozi wallet dot com. We

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also have a presence on YouTube and
and you can yes find us there.

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And the app is available live today
called Kudosi Family Wallet. It's available on

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Apple the Apple App Store and it's
coming soon to Android, and I just

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downloaded it, so I'll be playing
around with it and I'll give you my

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thoughts. And I think I think, Tyler or you might have the first

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financial application that goes viral on the
web, on well whatever, on your

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phones, on your tablet. Probably
it's the kind of thing you want to

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put on your tablet for your kids, given my choices, but however you

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have to do it. Check it
out, Hey, any questions comments?

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Tyler myself again the email addresses kl
at karr Letz dot com. Tyler wishing

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the best of luck on this really
a noble undertaking open succeeds beyond your wildest

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dreams. Thank you so much.
I appreciate that. Thanks for listening to

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carry Lets's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the

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latest, go to Financial Survival Network
dot com. Financial Survival Network now more

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than ever. W