When Alexia de Broglie was 10 years old and living with her single mother and younger sister, Margot, in Paris, she was given a credit card.

“She asked us to create a monthly budget and told us, from now on, you’re not going to get anything from me. I’m not going to buy anything for you,” de Broglie explains from her home in London. “You’re going to have to go and get your own school supplies, your own toothbrush, your own clothes, everything that you need to buy.” 

At the time, de Broglie remembers she and her sister were dumbfounded. But, given that a recent study by Cambridge University highlighted how our relationships with money are formed by the time we turn seven, her mother’s action proved a vital education for the girls.

Fast forward 15 years and the de Broglie sisters have launched Your Juno, an app that’s the first of its kind. “It’s a financial education and community platform for women and non-binary people,” she says. “We want it to be a reference point for anyone that has a question when it comes to finances. At the moment, money is important but there is a real lack of responsibility for who teaches the topic. Your Juno wants to own that and become a one-stop shop for anything that touches on money.” 

The lightbulb moment for the app – which launched in 2021 and has been downloaded more than 10,000 times – came at the beginning of the pandemic when conversations about financial awareness were front of mind.  

“All of the markets came crashing down and investing became such a hot topic,” she explains of the time, during which she was still working in financial consulting. “I was having these talks with my friends where I was explaining what the share market is and they were so interested and really wanted to learn, but there was a lot of frustration that it hadn’t been done before.”

In the following months, still working in the City, de Broglie became more aware of the discrepancies in financial literacy between men and women. “Even though they had similar levels of understanding, the boys were so loud and so cocky and so arrogant about their cryptocurrency portfolios and how they’re beating the markets, while the women were never really speaking about it, even though I knew that they had lots of knowledge,” she adds.  

Your Juno was born shortly after and launched officially in October 2021 in a bid to educate women and non-binary people on the basics of finances. Aware that their competitors educate on buzzy – and often more obscure and complex aspects of the financial realm – Your Juno, whose name derives from Juno Moneta, the Roman goddess of money, aims to teach people how to build emergency “Fuck you” funds, understand debt and the basics of saving. The sisters have worked with money experts Selina Flavius, author of Black Girl Finance: Let’s Talk Money, and Ellie Austin-Williams, host of This Girl Talks Money, to inform the ways in which they educate their audience.

The appetite is clear: the sisters have just raised $2.2 million (£1.7m) in funding from angel investors, 70% of whom are women, to drive them forward in their mission to build Your Juno, which they hope will become the Duolingo of finance – with its short educational videos and gamified content. 

De Broglie, however, remains aware of the work in the wider world that still needs to be done. Recent comments that young people should stop buying avocado toast and lattes in order to be able to get their foot on the property ladder are, in de Broglie’s eyes, deeply rooted in misogyny. “The narrative of the woman being an excessive spender has led to so many stereotypes,” she explains.

A recent piece of research by Starling bank, which analysed 300 articles aimed at educating both genders on finances, found that 65% of articles defined women as excessive spenders and 70% of articles aimed at men defined making money as a masculine ideal. The same study found that 75% of articles that were directed at women were predominately about scrimping and saving, whereas 90% of the articles directed at men were about growing and spending their money.

“If you look at investment platforms, women only make up 24% of the customer base, so over three quarters are men,” she adds. “But then you look at cryptocurrency and women only make up 7% of cryptocurrency holders. The divide is getting bigger and bigger and it’s really important that we tackle that as soon as possible.”

Download Your Juno here.

Images: courtesy of Your Juno