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Thrive (website)
Encyclopedia
Thrive or Justthrive.com, was a free, web-based personal financial management application offering personalized financial advice and specifically targeting people in their 20's and 30's. The service offers online money management and planning, as well as using algorithmic advice to offer personalized guidance, based on transactions pulled from a user's loan, bank, and credit card accounts. It was permanently shut down on June 3, 2011.
, Thrive was conceived when the founders noticed that their twenty and thirty-something peers had little access to credible financial planning. After entering private beta in early 2008, it was formally launched at Finovate 08 in October 2008 and reached the "$100 million under management" benchmark in less than two weeks. Thrive was acquired in full by LendingTree
in February 2009. Despite the acquisition, however, development remains based in New York City and continues to be staffed by the original team.
and Generation X
/Generation Y
, Co-founder Ori Schnaps on technology
and personal finance
, Lead Scientist Matt Wallaert on social psychology
, behavioral finance
and decision making
, and Outreach Coordinator Elisa Cundiff on financial literacy
and outreach.
Thrive has publicly spoken out against the policies of financial institutions that provide a higher standard of service to the wealthy, citing data from a company survey of 730 people that shows that the rich have access to lower fees, better interest rates, lower closing costs, and more services, including financial guidance, enhanced customer support, and concierge services. On April 30th, 2009, Thrive was on Capitol Hill advocating for increased federal support for financial education as part of the Jump$tart Financial Literacy Day.
in February 2009 but much of the original development team remained in place until May of 2010, when the last of the original team members departed from Lending Tree. In July of 2009, in sync with LendingTree's rebranding effort, Thrive created a white-labeled version of the site called MoneyRight. The sites are functionally identical, with MoneyRight being a version of Thrive skinned as LendingTree's budgeting site.
History
Founded by Avinash Karnani and Ori Schnaps in 2006 as a startup companyStartup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
, Thrive was conceived when the founders noticed that their twenty and thirty-something peers had little access to credible financial planning. After entering private beta in early 2008, it was formally launched at Finovate 08 in October 2008 and reached the "$100 million under management" benchmark in less than two weeks. Thrive was acquired in full by LendingTree
LendingTree
LendingTree is an online lending exchange. LendingTree is a web-based company that operates an online lending marketplace that facilitates matching borrowers and lenders...
in February 2009. Despite the acquisition, however, development remains based in New York City and continues to be staffed by the original team.
Features
- Financial Health Score to help users monitor their credit scoreCredit score (United States)A credit score in the United States is a number representing the creditworthiness of a person, the likelihood that person will pay his or her debts....
and savings to debt ratio.
- Actionable, step-by-step advice to help users improve their finances.
- Entire site, including advice, presented with minimal technical terminology: in "plain English".
- Dedicated customer support, including a toll-free phone number (1.888.831.4080) and non-form email response (support@justthrive.com).
- Enhanced budgeting, termed "behavioral budgeting" , that is based on the concept of "actions". The budget tells users what they can do each week and month, based on their individual spending habits and goals.
- Brings together checking, savings, credit card, CD, investment, retirement, loans, and other financial accounts into a single, automatically updating interface.
- New features are released on a roughly monthly basis.
Advocacy & Expertise
Thrive experts are frequently cited in the media giving commentary on financial issues, including splurge spending, the psychology behind "Free" , and the interaction between the economy and technology. Key experts include Co-founder Avinash Karnani on economicsEconomics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and Generation X
Generation X
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...
/Generation Y
Generation Y
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation , Generation Next, Net Generation, or Echo Boomers, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere...
, Co-founder Ori Schnaps on technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
and personal finance
Personal finance
Personal finance is the application of the principles of finance to the monetary decisions of an individual or family unit. It addresses the ways in which individuals or families obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future...
, Lead Scientist Matt Wallaert on social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
, behavioral finance
Behavioral finance
Behavioral economics and its related area of study, behavioral finance, use social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including consumers, borrowers and investors, and their effects on market...
and decision making
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
, and Outreach Coordinator Elisa Cundiff on financial literacy
Financial literacy
Financial literacy is the ability to understand finance. More specifically, it refers to the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions through their understanding of finances...
and outreach.
Thrive has publicly spoken out against the policies of financial institutions that provide a higher standard of service to the wealthy, citing data from a company survey of 730 people that shows that the rich have access to lower fees, better interest rates, lower closing costs, and more services, including financial guidance, enhanced customer support, and concierge services. On April 30th, 2009, Thrive was on Capitol Hill advocating for increased federal support for financial education as part of the Jump$tart Financial Literacy Day.
Relationship to LendingTree
Thrive was acquired by LendingTreeLendingTree
LendingTree is an online lending exchange. LendingTree is a web-based company that operates an online lending marketplace that facilitates matching borrowers and lenders...
in February 2009 but much of the original development team remained in place until May of 2010, when the last of the original team members departed from Lending Tree. In July of 2009, in sync with LendingTree's rebranding effort, Thrive created a white-labeled version of the site called MoneyRight. The sites are functionally identical, with MoneyRight being a version of Thrive skinned as LendingTree's budgeting site.