TLDR
- Fledged is an investment fund that parents set up for their children, building a strong financial foundation to start their life and ensuring nothing is out of reach.
- Fledged is being built to have a huge positive impact on the world by changing the way people approach finances and helping others.
My existential crisis
Long story short, I’m a hugely cynical person when it comes to the way the world works. Like many others, i’m wary of hidden catches, ulterior motives and even where our world is heading from a sustainability point of view and lack of a long term vision for planet earth.
After an existential epiphany, I came to the conclusion that fixing the world is simple. If everybody tries to make a net positive impact to their small world, no matter how big or small, we’ll all get there in the end.
I vowed to focus my time on things where I can make that net positive impact. GradConnection was a company where we helped people get meaningful jobs after years of study – I felt that GradConnection genuinely helped people and in some small way we made people’s lives better.
Fledged is our next company that is going to achieve huge net positive impact in the form of generational change whilst running an attractive business off the back of it and I couldn’t be more excited!
The context behind Fledged
Did you know, The average 18 – 24 year old in Australia has $4,500 in credit card debt?
Isn’t that ******? Paying the minimum repayments, you’d manage to take care of that small lapse in financial judgement in 31 years and 5 months. We won’t even begin to touch Buy-Now Pay Later products.
How about going to uni?
- A cost of a Bachelor of Accounting at a major university will cost $30,000.
- Barebones cost of living in a major city is $25,000 per year
- At minimum wage of $20 per hour working 25 hours per week along side your studies will scrape you through but doesn’t leave much for enjoying life, unexpected emergencies
Unfortunately for many people, the only option to help bridge gaps in this space are credit cards and BNPL products to get through which can further set someone behind.
How about buying a house?
If you manage to get your credit cards etc in check, you’ve got a degree and/or nailed down the start of a career you’re looking at a median house price of $1,100,000 in Sydney at the time of writing. Just some quick numbers to peruse for a “best case” recommended scenario:
- Deposit – Banks recommend 20% – so just a casual $220,000
- Stamp Duty – $45,802 dollars
The recommended financial position to buy a house requires $266,000 dollars. If by chance you don’t happen to have $266,000 burdening your bank account earning 0.4% in interest, its not a lost cause as you’ll still be able to borrow on a 5% deposit, but you’ll run into one of those catches I mentioned previously called Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI). LMI is insurance for the bank, not you and will cost close to $50,000 dollars, but don’t fear, you can pay it off over 30 years..
To buy the average house in Sydney, but in the worst case scenario:
- Deposit – Minimum of 5% $55,000
- Stamp Duty – $45,802
- LMI – $ $45,498
You need to have $100,802 in cash (not accounting for other fees, solicitors, house inspections etc) and have to take an additional $45,498 in debt.
How about just general financial freedom?
We’ve asked hundred’s of parents – what would you do if we put $2M dollars in to their bank account today. Sure a number were straight out of the door at their jobs to spend more time with the family, but the largest response was: “I’d still go to work but it’s nice to have the option not to”.
I think that this sums up our goal – we want to show regular families that with small, planned, early, barely noticeable investments in your families future, yourself and your children will easily be able to achieve financial independence.
Many people start their journey later in life – you hear about the successful fire movement advocates who start in their twenties, retire in their late 30’s – imagine what possibilities there would be for your children if you started them on this journey from when they’re born.
Fledged is the better way for parents.
Fledged is an investment fund for children with our main goals being to make sure that children:
- Can live life free of bad debt
- Don’t start life with $4,500 in credit card debt or otherwise, for the rest of their lives.
- Have nothing that is off limits
- From house deposits through to education, Fledged makes sure it’s all within reach
- Build financial confidence
- Financial literacy arms children with the know how to triumph over life’s financial challenges
- Are forward thinking
- Understand the magic of compound interest and time in the market as well as how they can help the world.
80% of parents are proactively looking for a better way and we’re happy that we can help parents with the following:
- Providing an easy and most importantly, an understandable way to approach investing
- Making it simple to set up a safe investment for their child from the day that they’re born
- Providing a child first investment product with no ulterior motives
- Unlike a large portion of the finance industry we won’t be hiding fee’s in complicated financial documents
- Being there to help with the whole journey, not just the part where we get a % of funds under management (FUM)
Help us shape the moneysmart generation and make the world a better place.
If money was our only goal, we wouldn’t have picked the funds management space as there are a number of challenges that come with it:
- Strict Regulatory Environment
- Safety for our children’s financial foundations are our top priority. Fledged will be fully regulated by ASIC and investments held separately so no matter what happens, a child’s Fledged is always safe.
- Hugely expensive
- As with anything with strict regulation, there are large costs associated with regulatory building blocks and fund architecture. There are no quick and cheap versions of this product, you’re all in before you even take that first $ of FUM.
- Long time to profitability
- With Funds under management driving a large part of our revenue, the industry average for profitability sits at 5 years. We are looking like we’ll be on track for profitability within 3.
Whilst we have solved many of our key challenges, we’d love to chat to all and anyone about anything related to Fledged and mentioned in this post.
If you want to help us change the world whilst building a very financially attractive company, please get in touch and we’d love to run you through everything – andrew@fledged.com.au
