WHAT WE DO
ChangEd is an all-in-one debt management platform helping people build a better relationship with debt so they can reach their financial dreams sooner. ChangEd allows people with debt to link all their loans and spending accounts on one platform. We then analyze their debt load and develop a repayment journey that aligns with their budget and accelerates borrowers out of debt sooner while helping people save in potential interest costs. ChangEd does this by giving people the ability to save in small increments with features such as spare change roundups from everyday purchases, scheduled intelligent transfers, and provides repayment recommendations to automate those savings toward their debt in an optimized way.
WHY WE DO IT
With over $14.96 trillion of consumer debt outstanding in the US and growing double digits each year, founders Nick Sky, Dan Stelmach and Mike Land feel the pain of debt personally. Americans are utilizing debt as a need instead of a tool and have a poor relationship with it.
OUR STORY
Dan and Nick are brothers who both graduated with business degrees accumulating over $120K in student debt. They were raised by a single mom who immigrated from Poland and worked two jobs to support them. One of those jobs was running her own cleaning business.
Nick said “We saw our mom work day-and-night to put food on the table and lived paycheck to paycheck. She taught us that we needed to “embrace the broom” which means we needed to understand that sometimes you have to do the hard work no one else wants to do to get to where you want to be.
The brothers realized that furthering your education provided more opportunities but also came with more financial strain.
Dan Said “No one in our family graduated from college and no one had the financial resources to do so. So, we borrowed money, just like millions of other Americans that carry student debt.”
After graduating, Dan realized the effort it was going to take to overcome his debt and the delays he was going to experience in his goals because of it.
Dan realized this when he tried to buy his first home a few years after graduating and walked away from the opportunity because he knew he would be stuck with a continuous cycle of bills and debt, even though he was approved to buy a home.
Shortly after, Dan came to Nick with a sticky note that had an idea to help people better manage debt, Nick was in! They realized most of their friends who went to school had student loan debt and never discussed it.
They realized the relationship between people and debt was broken. “People rarely discuss it, they don’t want to think about it, and they hate paying for it”, Dan said. They saw an opportunity to build something that made people feel better about it and helped them feel progress everyday instead of just viewing a balance that’s due.
Launched in 2018, ChangEd set off to help student loan borrowers. They’ve helped thousands of borrowers repay tens of millions of dollars in debt. They’ve also helped people reframe the way debt feels and have helped people accelerate their financial goals.
“One thing I thought I’d never say is that we get people excited about paying back their loans and that’s what matters most” – Dan
ChangEd now supports multiple debt repayment options such as credit card, mortgages, and auto loans to help people develop better repayment habits and eventually know what debt truly costs someone. They’ve also had the opportunity to Pitch on ABC’s Shark Tank and landed funding from investors such as Mark Cuban to continue their journey to help more Americans overcome debt.
