High school senior Sahishnu Manivannan originally created Finlingo as an extension. But after gaining some traction, he decided to make it into a website.
Manivannan goes to The Davidson Academy located on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. It’s a public magnet school designed for gifted students. Their students can also take classes at the University.
After having taken economic classes, he became a financial literacy instructor at the Boys and Girls Club of Nevada.
He said he would give presentations about topics such as credit versus debit or saving and spending but the kids would often get bored.
“That’s why I wanted to create Finlingo to make it a little bit more accessible and also more fun,” Manivannan said.
Finlingo gamifies financial literacy similar to Duolingo’s concept. It’s free for all users. Teachers can also set up a class on the website for their students to join and play with their classmates.
It has 120 lessons with five questions per lesson. Users can learn about a variety of topics including compound interests, net income, taxes and budgeting. It even tracks your progress so you can pick up where you left off.
Manivannan said he wants people to start learning about financial literacy at a younger age. Through Finlingo, everyone can integrate learning into their daily lives, even outside of school.
“So I think if you start earlier, people are going to be able to build things like a good credit score. They’re going to be able to save for the long term,” Manivannan said.
He said there are some areas he wants to improve with Finlingo in the future including the personalization of the questions. He wants to change the phrasing of the questions instead of the sequencing so it’s easier for the users to understand what’s being asked.
Finlingo has 1600 users and several schools from other states such as California, Utah and Illinois but none from Nevada.
Manivannan hopes to start gaining traction here and for Nevadans to find financial literacy fun to learn.
