What if there’s an app that encourages young Indonesians to save?
A design challenge on an expenses tracking app.

Part I. Meet the User
Meet Brian, a 23-year-old Engineering graduate from ITB. Currently living with his parents, he travels everyday to his office with the family car, earning Rp7.5million every month working in a local branch of a manufacturing MNC.

“I’m not that brave, and I kinda love the stability of a big company,” he says, when asked if he ever considers starting his own business. Climbing the ladder, he expects a salary increase of about 5% each year. [1]
All work and no play would make Brian a dull boy, of course. On his spare time, he browses for the latest PS4 games to buy, and he occasionally enjoys a good time with his friends at cool, hip restaurants in the Central Jakarta area. “Paulaner. The one at Grand Indonesia,” he answered, asked about his favourite hangout place.
Goals of the young
Brian plans to travel twice every year. [2] He has just come back from climbing the Rinjani last month, and he is saving up for a year-end trip to Singapore this December.
He is planning on getting married, too. He hasn’t researched thoroughly on the finer details on marriage yet (costs, schedules, etc.), but he knows he will get married somewhere around the age of 27–29. [3]
Other than travel and getting married, what Brian considers important to have are: his own car, house, and a sizeable saving for his retirement and family.

Unlike his parents’ generations, though, he doesn’t want to spend on luxury items (new laptops, branded goods.) [4]
“I save, but I’m not sure how much”
The only finance-related app on his iPhone 5s is BCA mobile, the mobile app connected to his savings account, but he rarely uses it. “Too confusing,” he says.

Instead, Brian checks his account balance twice a month from the ATM: when he pays for his credit card bill and when he receives his paycheck. He tries to save one-third of his salary each month [6], although sometimes it’s below his target since he rarely keeps track of his spending and saving.
Part II. Helping Brian to Save
Young, earning, yet yearning for more. Brian is a portrait (a persona, if you will) of Indonesia’s MACs: Middle-Class and Affluent Consumers. [7] According to a report by BCG, the will be roughly 141 million MACs in Indonesia by 2020 — a huge opportunity lurking.
As we have seen with Brian, the millennial MACs share few common traits: they are university graduates, tech-savvy, and have functionally-driven financial goals (experiences, not physical possessions).
The problem
Ask the millennials around if they are using anything to track their expenses and incomes, and most of them will say “Uhh… no” or using good ol’ paper-based budgeting journal with the occasional Excel.
This is somewhat worrying: if they don’t keep track of their monetary habits, will they be able to achieve their financial goals?
Hence, the big question would be:
“How do you encourage young Indonesians to save, in order to achieve their financial goals?”
How an app will help
Designing an app while keeping the big question in mind, we can deduce three important points:
- The users have to know how much they save (and spend).
- The users have to know their financial goals.
- The users have to know the relationship between their savings and their financial goals, which means both of these should be shown in a common term — the value in rupiahs.
Looking at the currently available personal finance apps for Indonesians — DompetSehat and Jojo Personal Finance — both of these apps have actually tried to tackle three of these points. [8]

But I believe we can do more.
Part III. Meet Tabung
Let me try to solve these problems with a new app: Tabung (“Save” in Indonesian). As an expense tracking app, first and foremost, Tabung will have the basic features, including expense tracking with categories, recurring expenses, and a summary dashboard. Using Indonesia’s major banks API to automagically insert expenses or incomes will be present, too.
What I would like to discuss in-depth, however, are the stuff beyond the basics. These are the features that will make Tabung different from other personal finance app currently out there.
Smart financial goal setting

I love the fact that the existing expense tracking apps have incorporated some elements of financial goals inside: when first opening these apps, you are usually asked to assign a Rupiah value to your goal (“How much do you want to save?”)
Yes, the users do know their goals, but they do not know how much they need to save to achieve that. Putting the responsibility of assigning a monetary value to the goal to the users are stressful, and they may end up with a significantly different range than the reality.
Well, with Tabung the users do not need to worry about that. During the onboarding process, Tabung will consult the relevant external APIs and come up with a rough monetary value attached to a goal.
Example: if Brian is saving up for a trip to Singapore in Dec 2017 (five months from now), Tabung will get the average price of a trip to Singapore from relevant apps such as Traveloka, and use that value as a goal to reach.
Actionable goals

Once Brian has successfully saved enough money for his trip to Singapore, he then would be able to take action on his goals, which is to actually purchase a flight ticket.
In Tabung, he would be able to see a list of relevant flights within his budget, compiled from Traveloka. If he doesn’t see what he wants, though, he can go directly to Traveloka to check out more available flights.
He would also be able to go to other relevant apps depending on his goals, such as Bridestory for wedding, Carmudi for car, etc.
Moreover, this is also a potential for monetization.
Simple expense tracking

All these nifty features won’t work if the users don’t actually use the basic of the app, though, which is to track their expenses and incomes.
Therefore, Tabung provides a simple way to add expenses or incomes, while being able to see the daily budget he can spend (calculated automatically from his income minus his goals), and the goals that he’s saving for.
The metrics
The end goal of Tabung, as stated before, is to help young Indonesians to save. Tabung is successful if Indonesians are saving.
This leads us to three measurable metrics:
- How disciplined the users are in tracking their spendings and savings (=how many times users click on that green ‘+’ button, and add expenses/incomes)
- How good the users are in spending within their means (=how many users actually stick to their daily/monthly budget, not spending more)
- How the users get through with their goal (=how many users take action once they reach their goal)
Part IV. Moving On…
What started out as a 3-day UX design challenge has unexpectedly becomes an impromptu study on the portrait of Indonesia’s MACs, their spending habits, and a brief rethinking of expense tracking apps to better suit their needs (and help them save).
There are, of course, still a lot of assumptions taken and questions needed answering, which I will try to explore further.
I believe that there is still so much more to improve in the personal finance space in Indonesia, and if anyone ends up creating a similar app in the future, count me in. Let’s help Brian to save. ;)
2. https://blog.jakpat.net/millennials-marriage-life-survey-report/
3. https://www.bridestory.com/blog/2017-indonesia-wedding-trends-report-by-bridestory
4. https://www.slideshare.net/JAKPATAPP/outlook-of-millennial-survey-report
5. https://www.di-onlinesurvey.com/en/2017/04/21/banking-service-usage-in-indonesia/
6. http://jakartaglobe.id/archive/indonesias-financially-savvy-millennials-live-within-means/
