It's the first day of the month. You know what that means...Paycheck Day! But then just a few days later, your wallet is pretty much empty again with all those bills to pay. It's a struggle all too common for millennials and the Gen Z. However, Kaushal Raj, a 17-year-old, believes that just a little bit of financial management can help solve this problem. The Chennai-based student has created an app called MYLAT (My Little Accountant) and it serves as a personal financial assistant. The app, targetted towards families and teenagers, can be used to account for income and expenses. It can also be used to set budgets, plan savings and set reminders for your loans and EMIs.
Started in 2018, the app has seen over 5,000 downloads so far. Explaining the purpose of the app, Kaushal says, "My main goal is to encourage the importance of financial literacy among the younger generation. Financial decisions and investment-related decisions are very important. The younger generation should be more informed about it because when you are older, there will be many challenges if you don't understand the impact of your financial decisions. It's important to inculcate the habit of accounting."
He goes on to add, "I have this relative who took too many loans and is now unable to repay it. There are others who overuse credit cards. There are many such problems that occur due to bad decisions. Nowadays, due to plastic currency, it becomes difficult to properly account for how much we're spending and saving. I was inspired by my grandparents who told me how they used to account for everything during their days. They always saved enough for emergencies. But that is not the case with today's generation. If they start the habit of accounting, they will save more."
On the app, you can set the income and expenses that you foresee for the month. There are features to set weekly and monthly budgets too. The app then creates graphs and shows you how much you're spending every month. It also has categories like food, accommodation and travel, and you can set individual budgets too. The app has alerts if you spend more than the budget you have set and will also send out reminders for payments that are due.
Kaushal participated in the KIDx Asia competition by Kidspreneur, a platform for. kids to share their entrepreneurial skills, experience and journey, and won an investment of `3 lakh. He now plans to make the process more automated and introduce more features to make it more secure.
