Money Management with Machine Learning
Mercury is a financial management platform that fully integrates the various forms of physical and digital currencies, tracks transactions with conversational reports, and uses machine learning to provide sound financial advice based on an individuals circumstances.
By first focusing on the financial habits of young adults, my research led me to consider the challenges of managing personal finances with an inconsistent income. After exploring these challenges, I discovered certain universal concerns with the current state of financial literacy and the modern tools available for maintaining financial health.
“The current landscape of bill paying and personal money management is chaos. I have 9 different apps on my phone that I use monthly for budgeting and paying essential living expenses. Nine.”
Research
Interviews were conducted with a financial advisor from Arvest Bank as well as four potential users. Each user interview utilized sorting cards to identify patterns and values associated with different payment types and management methods.
Whats wrong with the tools that already exist?
The current tools available focus on tracking the past. While this is beneficial for recognizing patterns, there is an underutilization of technology’s potential to give personalized advice to assist in the most difficult step: the decision making.
Though there are a multitude of tools available, each have different integrations and connectivity. The options become distracting. It takes many different apps, banks, and cards, not to mention different bill pay sites and apps, to get anything done.
These programs rely on the user to be proactive with set-up and to know enough about themselves to choose the right settings. If used inconsistently, many of these apps and reports become useless from the gaps in data.
While a cashless society may seem logical at this point, the human relationship with money is far from it. Money is transactional, but humans are emotional. Psychological relationships with money also vary greatly across economic stratospheres. Not all earners make a regular paycheck, with many lower income jobs providing variable, and sometimes largely inconsistent, incomes. Even stable, full-time workers in certain industries live paycheck to paycheck, because their income is radically unpredictable.
What little financial education there is in high schools and colleges focus on terminology and budgeting for a set monthly income. The lack of applicable information available to variable income workers prevents them from achieving financial security and improving their circumstances, much less saving for a home, a family, or retirement.