Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Young people are perhaps better known for spending
money than for saving it. But some new banking
websites are seeking to change that. These websites
offer young people the information and tools they
need to watch over their money. These sites also let
users share their financial experiences with other
young people. Michael Ferrari developed SmartyPig
with a friend in two thousand seven: "SmartyPig is
really all about helping people save for very
specific financial goals. So that could be a
wedding, a vacation, an iPhone."Mr. Ferrari says
SmartyPig began after he started a college savings
account for his new baby. He says that experience
helped him realize the power of saving for a
specific goal. Helping other savers pay attention to
their goals is the idea behind his company. Mr.
Ferrari says his website also enables outsiders to
add money to the accounts of its users. "Perhaps
maybe a holiday is coming up or your birthday is
coming up, and rather than getting a gift, your
friends, your family can actually contribute to any
of your SmartyPig goals." A growing number of young
people have shown an interest in personal finance
sites like SmartyPig. These sites offer tools that
help users follow their spending, set up a budget
and combine their investments. And the sites all
involve social media. Janet Stauble is with the
personal finance website bankrate.com. She says a
lot of people feel at ease sharing personal
information online. "It's not likely that, you know,
you might go to a friend and say, 'Hey, I paid off
one thousand dollars on my credit card today,' but
people write up blog posts about it and they explain
how they did it, and how much closer they are to
their financial goal, whatever it is." Steve Weisman
teaches about financial issues at Bentley University
in Waltham, Massachusetts. He says the more creative
the websites are in providing services, the more
successful they will be in competing against
traditional banks or even cooperating with them.
"For instance, SmartyPig, they are not actually a
bank, but they are partnered with a bank. And what
you're going to see is big banks and little banks
that are legitimate financial institutions, but not
necessarily the most savvy when it comes to
computers or the Internet, they will partner up with
other companies that may be doing some of the Web
material and other assistance."For VOA Special
English, I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
