Youthful Savings: Empowering the Next Generation

I tell you....finding guests for my blog has not been easy.  I'm sure most of my "solicitations" or "inquiries" have landed in people's spam folder.  I try hard to bring you, my readers, guests who not only are proven experts in their respective fields, but who can also speak and relate to YOU!  Also, I like business leaders who are willing to reach out to an underserved community like the type we belong to: the "small"/novice investor and entrepreneur community.  Today I bring to you a business leader who has a passion for helping our community, the people, out.  Her name is Somya Munjal, and this is her story...

I always knew I wanted to help make the world a better place. I just didn’t know how. I remember sitting at night praying to find my true calling. I jumped from one unfulfilling corporate job to another for years before I finally figured out what I wanted to focus on - economic empowerment.

It never made sense to me why some people seemed to have everything all while others didn’t have anything. I want to dedicate my life to eradicating the wealth gap. I believe that education is an agent for change and that’s why I created my for profit social enterprise Youthful Savings. We are committed to empowering the next generation with financial education and entrepreneurship training via our curriculum, online web applications and educators. For every dollar we earn, we give back ten cents towards youth college scholarships. The company has been around for a little over a year and we’ve already awarded over two thousand dollars in scholarships.

Creating a social enterprise isn’t an easy task. It’s a constant uphill battle and I feel like I’m always swimming up stream. What keeps me going is knowing that I’m finally doing something that I’m meant to do. We are currently in the phase of extreme growth so I feel like I’m working eight days a week. The hardest part is constantly having to work on defending our brand name. We aren’t at a place where people know who we are and often times financial education is not given importance. We’re working hard to change that.

The current student loan debt in the United States is over 1.3 trillion dollars. Our next generation is slated to make less and be more economically unstable than the generation above them. If we don’t take time to educate and empower our country’s youth, not only will they suffer but so will our economy. It is our duty to make the next generation stronger.

Somya R. Munjal, CPA, MBA, MAS is the CEO of Youthful Savings - an education technology company that empowers the next generation with financial education and entrepreneurship training. She's also the Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP. She's a firm believer in education as an agent for change and developing the human spirit. Follow her on twitter: @somya808.