By Aja Smith
What is one of the most — if not the most — crippling financial barriers keeping many young adults from achieving financial stability and older folks from being able to retire and fully take advantage of social security benefits?
You guessed it...
Student Loans.
Approximately 43 million Americans make up the 1.73 trillion dollars in student loan debt today. This number is growing at a rate the nation’s economy is unable to catch up with, and now with the Coronavirus pandemic, there are no promising signs of this growth slowing down.
Many believe that this debt has everything to do with financial issues; however, social inequalities play just as much as a role in this burden. Minorities are plagued by student loan debt at alarming rates and, like millions of other graduates, have a large sum of money they must begin to chip away, making it almost impossible for them to build any sort of generational wealth(Forbes).
A start-up that specializes in student debt repayment by the name of Rightfoot has created a simple and transpicuous approach to student loan resolution. Co-founders of Rightfoot studied and mastered the behavior of student loan repayment in order to maximally utilize debt payments, making it much easier for the everyday person to pay off their debt. Rightfoot does not work directly with students and other borrowers, but they do play the role of the middleman in offering APIs to third parties to help consumers.
They looked at the 14 trillion-dollar consumer debt as a whole and decided that the 2 trillion-dollar student loan debt would be a great starting point to resolving this problem. Unlike its oppositions that focus more on employers, Rightfoot supplies companies with their technology that can effectively distribute benefits to their workers in an efficient manner.
Rightfoot hopes to maximize wealth for those who are disproportionately underrepresented through a holistic approach.
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