I wrote one of my massive posts last night that I sometimes do... little did I know, my wifi had become disconnected, so when I clicked "post" I got a nice "connect to the internet" page. Attempting to go back in the hope my big long message would still be saved, I had no luck. It never re-wrote it because I was annoyed and it was near bed time, but I'll write something similar today. Historically I've always written my posts in google drive before copy / pasting onto the forum reply box... may I suggest to others to do the same if you ever plan on spending an hour+ on a post you're really excited about?
I think we have good time frames in line for the releases of CR.I.S.P for Retirement, followed by CR.I.S.P for Students. I have read some rather interesting, but not entirely unsurprising information gathered from a survey of 4500 ohio university students which I will share at the end of this post. I agreed with one of the posts made earlier that CR.I.S.P for retirement is something that Students will also have their minds on, so we may start with releasing the program that will attract a wider audience. I think a challenge will be preferred risk aversion among people closer to retirement. We will always be encouraging people to begin small with their portfolios (for students this might just be an encouragement to buy $10 on a pre-funded card / vault account or something), but convincing these same people that DNotes provides the investment vehicle to possibly take their small capital input, and turn it into something much larger within a matter of 5-10 years will be a real challenge. Students on the other hand, tend to have a lower propensity for 'delayed gratification', nor any material investment capital to utilise in their oft constrained budgets. I think CR.I.S.P for Students and Retirement will reward those most who get in earlier, like all great investments. The better we can communicate value in the DNotes investment vehicle, the more people we know will prosper.
I thought I'd leave a few quick quotes that demonstrate the secondary consequences of student debt before all those in the DNote community from the USA go to bed in a couple of hours (RJF, I will be in touch to see if I can go through any research on retirement demographics etc at your direction in the next day or two).
The following quotes and points made are from the Ohio student survey of 4500 students.
One in three students suffer insomnia due to financial worries, and 37 per cent report anxiety over their finances:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/student-finance/9604951/One-in-three-students-suffer-insomnia-due-to-finance-worries-survey-finds.html“Not having enough money to participate in the same activities as peers had the
largest positive effect (OR=5.708) on reporting financial stress. Students who regularly
spent more than they could afford by using credit or by borrowing were significantly more
likely to report financial stress than those who did not regularly overspend ”"In the same study, students who need to work to support themselves through tertiary education report more financial stress. Women also report higher stress levels. Students are more concerned by their level of debt at graduation, than by their current debt level."Interesting stuff...
Oh yeah, also the average student debt is now more than 30,000 per person! The US Government borrows this from the FED (criminal banking cartel) at 0.25%, and then sells the money to students at a higher than 6% stafford interest rate for 2015... shocking.
"Direct unsubsidized loans — the Stafford for graduate students — currently carry a 5.41% interest rate but will increase to 6.21% for loans disbursed starting July 1 2015. The US government borrows the money to facilitate these loans at 0.25% from the FED."Oh, and I almost forgot, how sick is this!???
If the government were a private loan provider, it would be one of the most profitable companies, next to Exxon mobil and Apple -
http://www.mintpressnews.com/how-the-government-profits-from-student-loans-to-the-tune-of-40-billion-a-year/197199/and this!?
In the UK - According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the average student debt will be £44,015 - higher even than the US. The Higher Education Commission says that it is particularly concerned about the future level of student debt with financial experts estimating that 73 per cent of all students will still be unable to pay off their student loans after 30 years, when debts are automatically wiped.
Urghhh... Not sure what to say now. But baby steps and we will fix it.
After reading your excellent post, I'm thinking of another product directly aimed at helping to pay off those loans. A CR.I.S.P, for Student Loan Repayment....
As far as retirement, I would like to see some data on:
- how many people run out of funds before they pass away
- How many people end up spending their IRAs on medical bills
- What does the average non skilled worker receive in monthly payout from a traditional retirement plan vs. an IRA
- What is the average rate of interest applied to retirement plans
I am with you with having a student loan payment component involved in the CR.I.S.P for students, but having it inclusive as one of the settings where you could say opt to "Auto-exchange" 100 DNotes every 6 months, and have the Vault account tied to your student loan providers bank account, where the USD funds would automatically be sent to.
I'm toying with some other ideas that involve providing things that students absolutely need. I think we would have to start small with pilot programs that won't cost the community a minimal amount (we work by donations I'll presume). One of these medium future concepts is brokering a special deal with a particular textbook provider for say one course at one university. Once the value of DNotes appreciates enough, we could sell just enough for USD to bulk purchase say 300 electronic licences for students to view their course textbook online with their computers / kindles or whatever. We could then offer these licences at a say 20% discount versus normal online prices with the commitment to go through that particular reseller. If we could negotiate a deal with the producer, then we could purchase at the same price as all competitors, but sell at a not-for-profit price in exchange for DNotes.
There are many different ways I've thought of that such a program could work / be funded, but the main goal is to provide students with what they find extremely useful now, so that they aren't just banking on holding this thing that in their minds 'might' be worth something in the future. I also hold the view that various services of any type (take university textbooks for example) could be provided for USD by a website run by the DNotes community, and all the proceeds can be used to provide cheap / charitable textbooks that are redeemable for DNotes. It is bar one concept I've jotted down at the minute that doesn't involve DNotes releasing it's own brand of beer as a marketing ploy re - "“Not having enough money to participate in the same activities as peers had the largest positive effect on reporting financial stress."
Trying to tie in the CR.I.S.P concepts together perfectly, CR.I.S.P for Charity will tie in perfectly with the goals of both CR.I.S.P for Retirement and Students (which will also tie in beautifully with one another).
Still trying to come up with the 'slam dunk' plan to entice the young, malleable minds that we call 'students' into crypto (DNotes) in a manner that:
1. Grabs their attention, and only requires a minimal amount of time to hold their interest,
2. Makes them genuinely believe and be EXCITED that the $10 (or whatever) that they spend on DNotes today could set them up for retirement and an early exit from debt. I mean... come on... if I walked up to you on the street and said "Hey, hold this 10 dollars worth of a currency you have never heard of, one day it could be worth millions"... well you might think I'm kinda weird (I could jest about such an outcome with the amount of money America is printing tho
). Not even the best wall street investor could hope for the types of returns many in crypto have come to expect, so scepticism is to be expected. We must convey effectively how undervalued DNotes are, and explain why they should be excited BEFORE they see massive increases in their crypto value.
3. Convinces them of the wealth and opportunities available in the first chance in a long time to get in early at the 'ground level' of this emerging market.
4. There are more... I just haven't finished thinking about it lol. I am of the opinion that the more Students we can give some DNotes to, say 100 each (the same goes for CRISP for retirement), and the value goes up say 10 fold... I think it is fair to say we will have a bunch of people starting to wish they had bought more, and to then do so.
Now RJF, tonight I might go and look up what an IRA is (obviously some pension scheme) but in NZ you just get like a few hundred dollars per week after age 65. I'll also be looking into UK, Australian and maybe less so NZ information (biggest anglo markets we can cover). I'm sure we have many DNotes holders from all over the world, but since we mostly only speak English, it stands to reason that we will attract mostly english speaking investors. I think China would be a great market to research, but as DYNA would say 'best to do at the most "opportune" time'.
On that Note, would it be helpful at all if the DNotes thread / website were translated into Polish? Crypto seems to be pretty big among Pole's, and half of my family are fluent - just not me, I spent more time learning German instead (to my family's dismay). I hear Chicago is the second largest Polish city in the world (by Polish population - 820,000), maybe our Chicago dwellers would personally know if there were many Polish Note holders.
(but I'm ineligible to enter, so are any references to Trumps hair piece)