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penny planner
Research Document — Chelsea Bretal, RenÊe Carraggi, Shannon Farrar, Michelle Wang
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Penny Planner Research Document
Project Overview
Market Potential
Working with guidance from the Fidelity Labs team, we all grouped together, tasked to take one of three problems (relating to retirement, value based investment, or student loans), create a product, similar to the way products are created in the Fidelity Labs incubator, run through different rounds of product design, and finally pitch our product.
To first understand our market, we started with a brief overview of the market potential. We noted the following:
We decided on tackling the theme of value based investment. We had a variety of reasoning around our choice, but it provided us the chance to blue sky think a solution in a market where solutions were and still are few and far between.
$300 Billion projected growth in impact investment by 2020. In 2016, 26% of assets were constituted as sustainable investments that are professionally managed - making up $22.89 trillion in totally. Testbed of new impact-investment ideas in India saw 14% growth per annual clip. Impact Investment has the potential to become a blue ocean strategy, similar to that of Uber and iTunes. Major organizations like the WEF are adopting impact investing. Clients interested in impact based investing, millennials (25% of advised based clients are either “very interested” or “extremely interested”), are set to insert trillions of dollars of wealth from the boomers in the next three decades.
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Chapter 1.
Our Initial Key Audience Insights Developed from our Key Market insights —
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Penny Planner Research Document
Initial Audience Insights
Uptown Young Professionals
To understand how to better design our product and deliverables, we need to understand our audience and what their wants, needs, and lifestyles are like. The following were derived from the data we found in our cursory audit of the market potential.
Educated young professionals living in or around urban centers - pursuing the work centric lifestyle while being socially and environmentally conscious.
Late Gen-Xers to early Millennial making more than $85k a year (most are working in Management and Business) and are likely starting to buy their homes be that in the burbs or the city. They’re investors of mutual funds and have a retirement plan in place (likely through their workplace). These individuals can be characterized by their work hard play hard lifestyle - the are active travelers and work out daily (think soul cycle, pilates and yoga). The likely prefer to shop at upscale grocers or farmers markets. They recycle faithfully and donate towards charitable organizations centered around the arts.
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Asian Americans
Early Families
As shown through our research, Asian Americans statistically invest more than all other races in taxable accounts (about the same amount of Caucasians have retirement only investment accounts).
Settling down and starting to have kids of their own, this group is starting to make major investments like buying homes and multiple cars, etc.
The fastest growing group of minorities in America - Asian Americans have been characterized by their work ethics and their surprising growth, not only in size, but in their ability to break into the professional work force and compete with established Americans.
Of the homeowners, over 65% have a mortgage on their home with the median value of the homes falling around $250K.
A large amount of the affluence of this group is contributed to their investments. Frequently traveling back and forth to Asia - this group makes this possible by working white collar jobs - over 66% of this group has achieved some college.
Being family centric, this group will likely spend their money on family oriented activities like movie rentals, trips to the zoo, etc. This group, unlike the previous two, is located all over the US - they dominate the Midwest, south and urban areas on the coasts. Aware of the future that lies ahead - this group is beginning to save by investing (either through employer or through mutual funds).
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Penny Planner Research Document
Interviews Round 1 After developing our key audiences, we began to interview friends and family who fit into our audience profiles. While the backgrounds and people were incredibly varied, there was one very noticeable insight that was same throughout: I wish I had started investing sooner.
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Christie
Pallavi
Mike
Liz
Age: 21 (Late Millennial)
Age: 22 (Late Millennial)
Age: 42 (Middle Gen Xer)
Age: 43 (Middle Gen Xer)
Occupation: Full Time Small Business Manager
Occupation: Full-time Student + Part time work study
Occupation: Unionized Contractor
Occupation: Receptionist
Salary: ~$40k
Salary: ~$6k
Types of Savings accounts: none
Types of Savings accounts: None
Largest Expenses: car payments, rent, phone bill, credit card
Largest Expenses: Student Loans, Food
Values + Interest: Family, working hard, success and happiness
Values + Interest: Honesty, Working Hard, being good to others
What they do in their free time: Watch the Patriots, Babysitting nieces, cruising and hanging with friends
What they do in their free time: Hanging out with friends, illustration, homework (she’s a double major)
Salary: ~$60k
Salary: ~$40k
Types of Savings accounts: Pension, 401k, Annuity(from a previous job), Stock Bond
Types of Savings accounts: Roth IRA (through Primerica), 401k, normal savings, life insurance
Largest Expenses: Caretaker of parent, car insurance, utilities
Largest Expenses: car, utilities, rent, loans, children expenses
Values + Interest: Kids, Family, Working / Money
Values + Interest: Health, Respect, and honesty
What they do in their free time: Watch TV-True Crime, Investigation Discovery, personal landscaping, going out for dinner dates w mom :)
What they do in their free time: watches TV-True Crime, Investigation Discovery, spends time doing family related activities
Teddy and Sonja
James
Steve (Butch)
Age: 47 (Middle Gen Xers)
Age: 60 (Late Baby Boomer)
Age: 61 (Late Baby Boomer)
Occupation: Senior System Architect at Dell/EMC and Assistant Librarian
Occupation: Owner of Farrar & Associates Construction MGMT
Occupation: Systems Support Technologist and X-Ray Technician
Salary: $300k
Salary: A little over $110,000 - Meditech & Radiology
Salary: $250K (Salary + Bonuses) Types of Savings accounts: two 401k accounts, one mutual fund, Life Insurance, Stock in Coca Cola Largest Expenses: children’s education, vacations, home improvement, mortgage, credit card payments Values + Interest: Women’s rights, Racial Equality, Environment What they do in their free time: Watch TV Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc, vacation down the Cape or in tropical Locations, pampering the cat
Types of Savings accounts: 401k accounts, stocks in VanGuard and TransUnion Largest Expenses: three children’s education, ski house and passes, home / rental improvements Values + Interest: historical preservation, local businesses, community involvement, local education, giving back to his college What they do in their free time: swimming, antique hunting, working around the house / yard, golfing, walking the dog, trying new restaurants, Red Sox
Types of Savings accounts: 401k accounts, stocks in different companies that are ethical, focuses in science, production, & agriculture Largest Expenses: children’s education, food, vacations, mortgage Values + Interest: Honorability, Family, Honesty What they do in their free time: Lots of TV (anything that involves “Chicago” in title he’s watching, GOT), Getting worldly news from HLN, Playing Hockey, Watching & attending sports games, Vacationing, Building & home improvement
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Penny Planner Research Document
Understanding The Types of Investments
Developed due to our utter lack of knowledge... —
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Stash of Cash
Savings Account
401K Investment
Mutual Funds
Pretty self explanatory - very common among very young people and older people who distrust the bank - make a roll of cash and keep in somewhere safe like a locked safe or in a bag under your desk or inside your mattress.
This is essentially just putting money into the bank and then letting it sit there. Similar to the cash, but it’s in a bank and can potentially gain value depending on the interest rate. A lot of people use this method to create an “emergency fund”.
This is considered standard compensation at this point, but a 401k is essentially a tax qualified, defined contribution pension.
A mutual fund is a pooled investment vehicle managed by an investment manager that allows investors to have their money invested in stocks, bonds or other investment vehicles as stated in the fund’s prospectus.
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ETFs
IRA
Pension
US Treasury Securities
ETFs or exchange-traded funds are like mutual funds in many respects, but are traded on the stock exchange during the trading day just like shares of stock. Unlike mutual funds which are valued at the end of each trading day, ETFs are valued constantly while the markets are open.
Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a type of savings account that is designed to help you save for retirement and offers many tax advantages. There are two different types of IRAs: Traditional and Roth IRAs. The primary difference between a Traditional IRA and Roth IRA is the type of tax benefit each offers.
A regular payment made during a person’s retirement from an investment fund to which that person or their employer has contributed during their working life.
US Treasury bills, notes and bonds are debt obligations of the US Government. Essentially when you buy a treasury security, you are lending the money to the federal government for a specified period of time. Because of a unique degree of safety, there is virtually no “credit risk”.
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Penny Planner Research Document
How is Our Audience Saving?
So What Have We Learned
Because of the nature of our audience they lean to try Off the bat, we realized how little about money we reand be lean and mean — this means they might be us- ally do know. We also realized that to become the next ing apps that monitor your money and pull money into “great generation” as predicted, we will need to save your savings and investment accounts automaticalmoney in a way that is radically different from our ly. We can also guess that most of our demographic parents and their parents. And maybe, most notably, likely already has some form of retirement savings, be we realized most people wish they understood investit 401K, IRA, or Pension. Additionally, many people are ment and savings sooner. If they did, they would have now keeping a number of accounts to tackle separate radically changed the way they spent money. expenditures; for example, a recent grad might have So from this, we began to really question the idea of a 401K, a credit, normal savings, college credit, and tackling value based investment and began to consid“parking lot” savings. er exposing people to the ideas of fiscal responsibility and language sooner and more meaningfully.
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Chapter 2.
Reframing the Problem
Rethinking the Approach + Rethinking the Concept —
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Penny Planner Research Document
Where Did Our Findings Take Us? After our initial interviews, while still motivated around the idea of ethical / value based investing, our key takeaway pointed us that our primary audience doesn’t even have a basic understanding of saving and investing, let alone how to ethically invest money in mutual funds.
Christie 21 — Full Time Manager
Alex 22 — Part Time Student + Work Study Threw out her 401k papers
Rachita 22 — Clinical Trial Assistant
because they scared her and she didn’t know what any of that is about or why it’s important.
Unsure of how to weigh out benefits and doesn’t understand how to choose the right offer.
Literally doesn’t understand the language around investments.
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What we learned from our parents... — Our parents are mainly self taught with respect to investment. The older generation wishes they knew about investment sooner. Millennials have little to no knowledge in investment strategies.
So if our schools aren’t teaching us about investments… And our parents aren’t talking to us about investments… And our friends don’t understand it… And our jobs aren’t explaining it… How can we even begin to ethically invest if we don’t even know to invest?
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Penny Planner Research Document
Reframing the Question: So what started as value based investment became...
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How do we get millennials to understand investment and begin to really think about their current financial situation; how can they prepare for their futures?
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Penny Planner Research Document
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Interviews Round 2 To get a better understanding of our audience with regards to our newly developed question, we decided to do a new qualitative interview, the get a better understanding of how much people know and what they don’t know.
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Recent grads are People feel that nervous about find- they will be uning jobs. dervalued With an over-saturated market of highly educated recent grads, all willing to work for less than you, millennials are nervous about their future careers.
5. Many teams don’t even have an HR employee / team.
From low pay to location to other compensation, people feel like their biggest concerns are generally related to money.
6. People don’t know what 401Ks and IRAs are.
With the rise of small and While some people undermighty teams, we’re seestood 401K, many don’t ing more companies with know what an IRA is. little to no HR intervention. While some have mandatory meetings with their HR coordinators, some rarely interact with HR at all.
3. While some recent grads had help from their friends, many had to go into the job search alone. Many recent grads feel like their parents don’t understand their industry or that their friends (with the same knowledge as them) are more eager to help.
4. The way companies present their benefits varies widely. From HR groups to casual chats to offer letters to online forms to stacks of papers, there is no concise way to presenting your offer / benefits.
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Recent grads want to know more about money.
Millennials vastly underestimate how much they need for retirement.
Be it investments to mortgages to negotiating, millennials do want to know more about money from the small things to the big things!
I saw some people estimating only $400,000, yikes! People just have no idea how much to save.
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Penny Planner Research Document
Update Initial Audience Insights Recent Grads / Young Tradesmen Newly Hired Living in Metro/Urban areas (likely renters or living with parents) Probably love to eat out and get fancy shmancy coffee Probably watch Netflix and Hulu and listen to music on Spotify and Apple Music Amazon Prime users - smaller, but more frequent, more impulsive, purchases Use social media for everything! Have little to no knowledge about finance or investing or money in general
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Grad Students
Freelance & Unemployed
Corporate Workers
Truly have little to no knowledge beyond knowing that a 401K and IRA exists - likely don’t know what a IRA is at all.
Might have some more knowledge from friends and family while on the job search
Have the most knowledge but still have a lot of gaps in the understanding.
Crave financial stability and are likely nervous about the future.
Feel like they are not valued by companies
Don’t fully understand how much they need to retire
Despite having HR teams don’t feel comfortable contacting them or learning more about benefits
Are very concerned financially, but their five year plan is very career focused.
More focused on finding work and getting money just to get by rather than investing for down the line
Some of the people we interviewed, despite not working in HR, serve as HR for their company They want to know about investment, but feel they’re not qualified in the language or the money
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Penny Planner Research Document
Possible Channels
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Combined package with a pamphlet and interface component, video series, book, interface with personalized features to help navigate investment strategy, blog, workbook, planner to organize future investments, a teaching course that is sold to employers, course outline for high schoolers and their parents, rip off calendar with financial advise, app, drinking game / card game involving drinking and financial advise, little kids board game similar to Life, app that limits spending and pulls into investments
Our Preferred Solution — Planner to help with financial advising and organization (filled with cute doodles and stuff)
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Penny Planner Research Document
Unique Value Proposition
The Competition
We explain financial advising in an apThe competitive environment is pretty proachable, addictive and inviting way weak. Most places for people to learn that organizes your life while addressing about budgeting and investing exist only your financial needs that you didn’t even on weird websites, strange books on know you had :) Amazon, youtube videos and the money diaries on Refinery29.
Unfair Advantage We’re not acorn or other money monitoring apps. We cannot be like chime, we cannot connect accounts.
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Chapter 3.
Planning Our Way to Success Bookmapping, moodboarding and piloting —
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Penny Planner Research Document
Bookmapping Focusing in on the goal of creating a planner that encourages and helps young adults learn more about fiscal responsibility over the course of a year, we wanted to create a space that didn’t feel unapproachable or overwhelming like our competitors were doing. The beginning of the year is based on a money diary approach: by writing down what you’re spending, you inadvertently become aware of your habits. Also by keeping receipts you can see how frequently you’re going out, buying things from stores, etc. The idea is to introduce the idea of tracking and budgeting in this time period. Spring is all about cleaning: in this way we wanted to create a time to write down a financial plan. This section will have an emphasis in savings (do not confuse with investing). Summer is the introduction to investment (scary!); it will introduce new strategies and ideally it would partner with a Fidelity app that would create easy ways to invest similar to acorn Fall in prepping for the following year by thinking about long term plans. Thinking about different ways to approach investment to cater to your lifestyle and what you want for your future. It will also include a financial glossary to show everything you’ve learned!
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Penny Planner Research Document
Interview Round 3 We conducted another interview to figure out more characteristics and planner information about our key audience. 55 of our friends and family participated and the findings were astounding.
Do you organize your life using apps or planners?
No
Yes
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1. What is your favorite app? People love Instagram, even more than really any other apps at all.
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People spend a lot People prefer of time on their designs featurphone. ing a mono line or bold colors and Most people answered photography around 3-5 hours of their
4. People characterize themselves as riding a wave or being ambitious / motivated.
day o the phone.
5. People prefer a physical planner over an app.
6. They best learn content by doing a combination of activities, listening, reading and writing.
7. People who don’t use planners more frequently miss bill payments and events than those who use planners.
8. Our audience likes Stranger Things and Friends a lot lol.
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Penny Planner Research Document
Design
— Instead of having one concise direction, we each took a few pages each and then user test them to see what resonated and what didn’t.
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Penny Planner Research Document
Piloting Findings Perhaps more room for overall planning; the divide of having both a regular planner and a financial planner was questionable (what I heard in my user testing).
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Penny Planner Research Document
Design Progression A need for more universality in the design as it seems to favor a specific niche. Much more room for writing, ditch the boxed in lines. Less text heavy on the spread(s) where we introduce a new topic (like how we have 3 themes/subjects throughout the planner)
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Chapter 4.
Planning Our Way to Success Bookmapping, moodboarding and piloting —
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Penny Planner Research Document
The Game Plan Huge survey to better understand how users use planners and what styles they prefer Video tape over the head the first month walkthrough of the planner (similar to the BuJo video on the site) Upload different versions of the site to different social media and launchrock.com to test our highest risk — price
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Inspiration: Bullet Journal Video
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Penny Planner Research Document
Riskiest Assumption in Test We wanted to see how much people were willing to spend / if they would be willing to invest in a penny planner at all.
Penny Planner $
$$
$$$
Muji
Target
Urban Outfitters
$3.50 - $20
$12 - $20
$20 - $25
$$$$ Shinola + Nordstrom $30 - $70
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Interview Round 4 Our last interview was to see who uses planners, what kinds of layouts do they like, how do they want the physical product to feel, what do they wish their planner had?
Gender of Planner Users:
Non-Binary
Male
Female
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Penny Planner Research Document
Industry of Planner Users
People interested in financial planning
Creative
Creative
Other
Other
If so, what do you want to learn about?
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Preferred planner styles
What people use their planners for
77.6% prefer hardcover
55% prefer inline style
People feel as thought their planners don’t give them enough space to write or the flexibility to use the planner to their full potential.
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Penny Planner Research Document
What We’ve Learned — Our key audience are women in their late teens to late 20s who work in the creative industry People want planners with more space and more places to write in content that planners don’t already have People want to learn about fiscal responsibility and budgeting Our audience is drawn to “trendy” designs, but want something cleaner for their planner They want freebies like stickers lol
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Chapter 5.
Creating a Final Product
Bookmapping, moodboarding and piloting —
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Penny Planner Research Document
Prototype Our prototype is a working planner — only January is designed with a book map for the rest of the planner and a sticker page.
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Penny Planner Research Document
Piloting Riskiest Test in Assumption We piloted our planner using both a social media campaign and a website with an email submission. Overall the test went well, we had about 15% engagement rate.
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Homegirl really wanted to buy it!
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Penny Planner Research Document