This podcast originally was posted in 2019. 

Educators know how challenging it can be to explain personal finance concepts to their students. Now imagine if you had the additional challenge of explaining these concepts on one side of a cocktail napkin. That is Tina Hay's passion and her business. Napkin Finance has come on the scene and gained traction with millions of consumers with a concept summarized on their website as "Money Simplified." Hear Tina describe her entrepreneurial journey, how she partnered with the White House and the most popular napkins in their collection. Enjoy!

Details:

• 0:00~1:09 Introduction
• 1:09~2:31 Tina and Napkin Finance
• 2:31~5:05 Learning from entrepreneurial parents
• 5:05~6:02 First venture in high school
• 6:02~8:00 Inspiration for Napkin Finance
• 8:00~10:07 Why compound interest is so important
• 10:07~10:32 A word from NGPF
• 10:32~12:42 Starting up and finding an audience
• 12:42~15:07 Establishing partnerships (even with White House!)
• 15:07~16:23 From digital napkins to physical napkins
• 16:23~18:05 Napkins Tina is most proud of
• 18:05~19:07 Most popular Napkins
• 19:07~20:26 What keeps Tina going?
• 20:26~21:20 Videos and animated napkins  
• 21:20~22:52 Women and finance
• 22:52~24:03 Conclusion

Sources:

• Napkin Finance
• Compound Interest Napkin
• Some NGPF Lessons with Napkin Finance
  • Lesson 10.5 Dive Deeper Into Taxes Resource 5
  • Lesson 11.6 Other Types of Insurance Resource 2

Quotes:

• “I am a visual learner and for most people who are visual learners, numbers are not very palatable and so I have always used images to solve my difficult questions to understand how things work. Visual learning is a classic concept. Mozart, DaVinci, Einstein, Freud, they all used visual images to solve their big problems. The inspiration was from one napkin about compound interest and it grew into a whole library of content about different topics regarding finance.”

• “It’s so much fun to see how the napkins are useful for people. We’ve seen YouTube videos where younger people are studying for tests and using our napkins to help. We’ve also seen an audience of older readers and an audience of people who have never received a financial education who have made decisions off of what they learned from our content. That’s been really exciting.”

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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