Reimagining the personal financial experience
Business and experience design are two areas our firm specializes in. And often as we reflect on our client’s business challenges we naturally reflect on our own personal experiences as we think about their ‘target users.’
For a number of reasons, finance has been top of mind for our family dinner table discussions. The following are all the different financial ‘pain points’ I am trying to understand and maneuver through as a mother, wife, friend, sister, and business owner. Here are some of the personal financial HMWs I’ve run into recently.
My 9-year-old son has decided he wants to take control of his financial future and do something about his shelter-in-pace boredom. To this end, he has started looking up jobs a 9-year-old can do: sell lemonade, walk dogs, take out the neighbors’ trash, and lastly become a ‘freelancer.’ His father had a paper route as a kid in Ohio, I babysat in San Diego, and my girlfriend detailed the cars in her Minnesota neighborhood. Today these are unlikely options with Covid, the gig economy is adults-only, and then there are child labor laws. A weekly allowance doesn’t work for us because we don’t believe they should be paid to do chores.
Alternatively, our 11-year-old son, when we were talking about saving money, instead of a savings account he said he just wants a Paypal account so he can buy things from Roblox. I tried to explain that Paypal is only for purchasing and not saving money, he didn’t really seem to understand that we were having a saving conversation or get that saving is a good thing.
How Might We educate and empower our children to understand the importance of financial accountability?
My boys and I finally agreed on an Etrade Account where they can grow their savings by investing in Roblox and other gaming stock. Dogecoin has also been brought up as an area to invest in.
My sister and her Millenial friends are currently speculating on cannabis, the micro-dosing psychedelics market, and cryptocurrency. Some spend quite a bit of their workday day trading. Prior to their 30s, many had sometimes less than $5000 in the bank account. All of them own property in the bay area at this point and are growing their credit, leverage, and wealth on top of their investments. Many have a full-time job, plus a side hustle.
My sister and I also have friends that have had no financial education and/or do not trust the system. They have never had a credit card until their 30s and pay for everything in cash. They do not trust banks or financial institutions in general. If there is a financial tool that they use on a day to day it is more likely an Acorn, Robinhood, Venmo, and PayPal, rather than a traditional institution. Some of this is socio-economic, some cultural, and all lack of general fiscal education. I still hear of people that are middle class that hides their money (or gold) in their walls and under their beds and in their backyard.
How Might We give our young adults the trust and confidence as well as understand the risks of todays financial options?
My husband and I are in our mid-40s and have been told by our fiscally and politically conservative financial manager that things and people are crazy ‘out there’ right now and that we should just sit on our savings for a bit. Our investments have been mostly in the bay area real estate arena. It is close, we can see it, we can touch it, we can manage it, we can maintain it, and feel like we can control it. The stock market feels too risky for us and does not feel tangible nor controllable.
We have also updated our will and trust, added more life insurance, and are also hoping to add umbrella insurance to our financial portfolio. Given the recent death of a family member due to Covid, these things became even more important for us to tighten up to make sure our family will be taken care of if something happens to one of us.
How Might We guarantee the financial stability of our children during these uncertain times?
As a founder of a boutique consulting firm, my biggest frustration is having money in the bank that we can’t put to work for us. We are just starting to invest this year in our own company, but staring at the funds we have built up to do nothing until we spend it is super annoying. Our accountant has also recommended we do apply for PPP due to our shortage last year, and we are excited about leveraging those funds for a non-profit that we’ve been wanting to build out that focuses on only global social impact work. We would also love to invest in some of the Startups we work with but not sure if that is a good idea.
How Might We we make the money we worked hard for work for us?
We have worked on quite a few B2B fintech projects. The following were a couple of the challenges we’ve been approached with help to solve:
- bringing a new investment product to market
- defining a new mobile banking experience
- helping Millenials save more
- understanding why NPS was falling across various financial products
- foster a better community culture across an integrated digital and in-person banking experience
- retain the family members of our core wealth management clients as wealth is passed to them
Would love to hear about your personal, commercial, or wealth challenges, or any opinions or thoughts on the above.
*Hudson has since decided he will leverage the digital camera his grandfather gave him and post them to Unsplash to start his freelance journey. No pictures have yet been taken, but the camera is charging.
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We are The SIX, a women-founded and owned strategy and innovation firm. Feel free to ask questions, challenge, and share new ideas and frameworks in the comments section below. To learn more about us visit us at www.the-six.co
