Feel like you’ve been spending too much on coffee runs? Kindros can help you gain control of your budget—or help you put that coffee money somewhere useful. Photo by Unsplash/Jonny Gios

Finance

Do You Overspend on Coffee? Understand Credit Scores? New Software Helps Students with Financial Wellness

The free program Kindros is the result of a collaboration between Financial Assistance, Student Wellbeing, and the BU School of Medicine’s Student Financial Services & Housing Resources

Do you know how your credit score is calculated? What about how interest rates work? Or here’s another question: Do you feel like you spend too much on coffee runs or DoorDash?

No matter your answers, there’s a new, and free, financial wellness resource at your disposal, courtesy of Boston University Financial Assistance, Student Wellbeing, and on the Medical Campus, Student Financial Services & Housing Resources. And it’s worth your time.

Kindros is a new money management and financial knowledge platform. Its financial building blocks system, tailored for each organization that utilizes it, takes users through easy-to-understand lessons on the basics of personal finance. BU students currently have nine learning modules to choose from: earning, budgeting, saving, credit scores, borrowing, insurance, housing, education, and retirement. (Additional modules on student loans, taxes, and investing are expected later this year.) Students can also plug in their financial information to generate personalized projections and spending plans. 

There are two versions of Kindros available: one tailored to students on the Charles River Campus and one to students on the Medical Campus. Although the program is targeted for students, anyone with a BU email address can create a Kindros account. 

Why offer students financial software? Because they want it.

Polls of incoming freshmen at Orientation consistently yield financial well-being as students’ top concern, says Pedro Falci (COM’11, Wheelock’15), director of the Wellbeing Project within Student Wellbeing. 

“This tells us that our students are not only concerned about the general cost of their education, but also how they can develop skills and practices that will ensure their financial security upon graduation,” Falci says. 

“Financial well-being isn’t necessarily about getting rich quick or becoming super wealthy,” he continues. “And there’s a lot of noise out there around things like investing in meme stocks and in cryptocurrency.” By providing access to tools like Kindros, “we want students to get beyond the noise to make sure they learn sound habits that will serve them well in the long term. It’s all about having confidence in, and autonomy over, your financial decisions.”

Learning—and setting—smart money habits early is critical, says Kindros founder Stephen Martiros. 

“The good and bad thing about habits is that they’re slow to build—but they pay off,” says Martiros, a longtime entrepreneur and money management professional. Kindros’ BU modules are specifically designed to include accessible, practical, and unbiased information that users can grasp and apply while still in school. (Martiros will speak on the Medical Campus on February 20; find details below.)

“One of our core principles is simplicity,” Martiros says. “If the system isn’t simple, people won’t use it or stay with it. We wanted to keep our content as simple as possible in order to really help people make positive changes in their lives.” 

Another core principle? Trust. Unlike other financial software, “we’re a public benefit corporation—we’re not going to advertise a product or sell your data,” he says.

Instead, Kindros can help you understand the basics of budgeting—known as your inflows and outflows—and suggest limits so you don’t overextend your income every month. Or, what if you put that monthly coffee money (yes, it really does add up) toward prepayments on one of your student loans? Kindros can show you how putting even a little bit toward your loans—especially high-interest loans—while you’re still in school can make a huge difference in the long run. 

The program can also help users understand bigger real-world financial scenarios. For example, in the housing module, a personal calculator lets users plug in variables for buying a house. Let’s say you put a 10 percent payment down on a $400,000 house with a 7.5 percent mortgage rate. What would your annual income need to be to comfortably pay your mortgage, insurance, and property taxes every month? The answer: around $127,000. Plug in a 4 percent interest rate, however, and the annual income needed drops to around $92,000. 

Of course, buying a house probably isn’t an imminent goal for your average undergrad or medical resident. But settling on a career path that’ll set you up with enough income to save for a 10 percent down payment? Now we’re talking—and now you’re armed with the numbers needed to accomplish your goals in this economy. 

That’s the whole point of offering students tools like Kindros, says David W. Janey, BU Financial Assistance associate director. 

“Choices you make now while in college can have significant implications on your financial life after college,” Janey says. By gaining control of your money habits now, “you can start to think about your priorities and how you might be able to make better choices. You do have choices, which you can make mindfully—and with a budget.” 

Kindros founder Stephen Martiros will speak Tuesday, February 20, on the Medical Campus at the Financial Building Blocks: Earning, Saving, and Investing with Stephen Martiros event, hosted by Student Financial Services & Housing Resources, Instructional Building, 72 E. Concord St., from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. Learn more here. 

Looking for more financial wellness resources? Take advantage of BU Smart Money webinars and in-person events or check out the new Smart Money Blog. On the Medical Campus, Student Financial Services offers resources, events, and webinars through the Financial Wellness program.