Two local ASU graduates, Caleb Barclay (Architecture ’09) and Ben Adam (Sustainability ’09) have built an easy-to-use online investment calculator in hopes to curb a growing crisis among Millennials of not investing for the future.
The tool, investmentcalculator.io, has already won multiple design awards and currently ranks fifth on Google.
“Most Millennials have grown up in a world that experienced multiple financial crises, and have a lot of factors to consider in daily life like the rising costs of education and living among other things,” Adam said, a millennial himself.
“We’re seeing trends that Millennials would rather save their money than invest it, which could result in an economic crisis when this generation prepares to retire if not corrected in the next 5-10 years. So, we wanted to create well-designed tools to help people – specifically our generation – understand the importance of investing and how to get to where they want to be by retirement age.”
While there are some other online retirement planning tools, they’re often bogged down by complicated interfaces, opaque questions and features that aren’t easy to understand, or hidden behind paywalls. Adam and Barclay wanted a free, easy-to-use and well-designed platform to help people prepare for their future.
The site offers simple calculator tools to figure out how much to save per month for the desired retirement income with award-winning data visualization and design. It also offers tips on how to save more money each month, and information on savings recommendations.
“We found through our own stories and validated through research studies that there’s a huge lack of financial literacy and forethought with many people under 40,” Barclay said. “We are hoping to help bridge that gap a bit by offering easy tools that makes learning financial literacy fun – without the extra baggage found on other platforms.”
