We were lucky to catch up with Ranvir Patankar & Neel Vadher recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ranvir Patankar &, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career
While there has been a positive development in mandating financial literacy education, many individuals in the United States—and globally—continue to lack basic financial literacy skills. We believe this knowledge gap is due to the limited exposure to personal finance concepts during secondary education, disproportionately affecting communities of lower socioeconomic status.
Through TFS, our purpose is to teach and encourage financial literacy amongst youth around the world, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. With today’s increasingly complex world of finances, educating the youth has never been more important. We focus on giving youth a strong foundation of financial literacy through online courses, in-person seminars, and partnerships with organizations to implement financial literacy education in schools.
While our progress is rewarding, the problem remains prominent. According to national studies, young adults rank among the least financially literate demographics. We imagine an education system with a mandatory personal-finance class in every secondary school in the U.S. and internationally, equipping all students with not only academic knowledge but also the skills to budget their money, invest wisely, and make informed financial decisions.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
If you haven’t heard about us before, A True Financial Start (TFS) is a student-led organization dedicated to providing all youth with a strong foundation of financial literacy in an accessible and affordable manner.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we both found our love for finance. Wanting to share this with all of our friends, we noticed the distinct lack of financial literacy in our peers. Also seeing that financial literacy wasn’t mandated to be taught in our state and 25 others, we created TFS, hoping to spark interest in those with an unrealized love for finance, just as we discovered ours.
Over the last four years, we have held three month-long online courses teaching various financial concepts, partnered with Vanguard’s My Classroom Economy program to bring financial education to our school, and partnered with guest speakers—from Shark Tank contestants to Wharton professors—to put on in-person workshops for hundreds of students!
Looking forward, we hope to continue empowering youth to make sound financial decisions and feel confident regarding their financial futures!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
During the summer after our freshman year, we hosted our first-ever online course:: Basic Financial Concepts. While preparing and carrying out these weekly classes was an amazing experience, we quickly realized that hour-long online financial lectures weren’t the most engaging way to appeal to our audience, so we pivoted in our approach.
First, we reached out to Vanguard’s My Classroom Economy, an interactive program dedicated to teaching children financial responsibility through fun, experiential learning. After introducing this program to our high-school business class, we noticed that students were really excited about the program’s fun approach, and have been working to expand the initiative throughout our district.
Another key change we made was pivoting from online courses to in-person seminars and workshops with engaging guest speakers. In the last year, we’ve put on a college financing workshop with Wharton professor Dr. Bazelon for over 350 students, an investing workshop with Vanguard’s Dominick Montante for over 300 students, and a panel seminar with Shark Tank contestant Jake Voorhees and Fulton Bank VP Tiffany Sharpe for over 300 students.
We’ve also posted these events online, making them accessible to all students! Through these changes, we were able to better connect with our audience and leave a lasting impression on them.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
One major realization we had when starting TFS was that many individuals viewed financial topics as boring. A resource that reshaped our thinking was the Instagram page @admani_explains. Admani’s engaging and humorous approach to breaking down complex financial concepts showed us that financial education doesn’t have to be dull—it can be fun and relatable. This inspired us to adopt a similar philosophy for TFS by focusing on making financial literacy education fun and engaging, using simulators in our courses, and even bringing in fun guest speakers at our seminars (such as Jake Voorhees, a Shark Tank competitor)!
Another time we used online resources was to ensure that we were well-prepared to teach. Prior to teaching our courses, we used various platforms like Khan Academy, DECA Plus, and Next-Gen Personal Finance to educate ourselves on key topics. These resources provided us with the knowledge to properly teach financial topics in a digestible and fun manner!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://atruefinancialstart.org
- Instagram: atruefinancialstart
- Youtube: A True Financial Start
