USU student wins $10,000 grand prize in national video contest

LOGAN – Utah State University student and Providence native Paige Rood was awarded $10,000 when national financial education initiative Save 10 announced its video contest winner today. The nationwide contest invited the contestants to create short videos that encourage people to start putting aside 10 percent of their money to retirement.

Before she was picked as the grand prize winner, Rood was one of the 10 finalists. Four of the finalists were from Utah, including three from Cache Valley. Rood was flown to Washington D.C. to accept the award Tuesday afternoon.

“When they called me it was kind of unreal,” she said. “This whole thing started as me entering a video into this contest for my economics class.”

Rood’s professor offered anyone in the class extra credit for entering. Rood said she thought, “Why not?”

“I didn’t expect to even make it to the finals,” she said. “Let alone win the whole thing.”

But it wasn’t just the extra credit that got Rood interested. She said Save 10’s mission is a cause she believes in.

“It’s a big problem,” she said. “A lot of people are going into retirement with not enough money.”

To create her <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-mZjxJslFQ” target=”_blank”>video</a>, Rood wrote a song about saving for the future, recorded it, then made a music video called “Sally’s Lemonade.” She got help from her neighbors, the Chadwick family and the Jones family, to make it.

“I tried to think about my favorite commercials, the ones that stick in my head,” she said. “I started to notice the ones I remembered the most were the ones that had musical jingles.”

Rood said she plans to use the prize money to fund her upcoming LDS mission she hopes to start this summer. She doesn’t know where she will be serving yet, but said she is “happy to go anywhere.”

“I would really love to speak Spanish,” she said. “That is something I’ve always kind of wanted to do, but wherever I’m sent will be a good thing.”

During her trip to Washington D.C., Rood said she will get to tour the White House, Capitol Building and meet Senator Orrin Hatch.

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