Hello!

The other thing I did today was meet up with Jeff Kirsch to chat about thesis. It was his 30th birthday and admittedly thesis was a terrible thing to be talking about with such things to celebrate. I apologized. He didn’t seem to mind, and our much anticipated conversation began.

Here are some of the things we talked about:

APPLYING AND EXTENDING THE METAPHOR OF THE COMMUNITY BANK:
He talked about pre-depression era banks and I talked about Christmas clubs, and we rambled on about the things that banks did before we were all encouraged to put our money into more risky investment products. In case you missed it, because likely I didn’t post it, the Christmas club is not really a club at all (much to my chagrin), but a savings program that banks offered during the Great Depression. If you were part of a Christmas club, you deposited a particular amount into a special savings account each week. At the end of the year, customers would get the money back and be able to use it for their holiday shopping. They reached the height of their popularity in the 1970s. 

The idea was brilliant- A simple product that motivated consistent behavior  towards a defined goal. It categorized savings behavior in a way that reframed people’s perception of and access to money. Both Jeff and I wondered if there were other such schemes that early banks employed and if any of these would have similar relevance to my project. 

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE MEETS VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND TECHNOLOGY
Can the model and values of a community bank be applied when people don’t live in the same community but are drawn together through other means besides geography? I discussed this in a bit of detail in my earlier post about using social capital within a financial context.

BUILDING TOOLS FOR MULTIPLE USERS
Making and managing money used to be an activity done by a single individual. Eventually women started managing the money, but it was the men who made it. Though there was still a distinction and separation between roles and behaviors, there were two people involved in the overall activity. However, now many of our financial behaviors not only involve more than two people, but require more than one person to manage. Roommates, partners, teams, spouses, parents, clubs, groups. All of these people are now required to share, split, monitor and manage expenses in ways that traditional banks and services are still ill-equipped to handle. Mint.com, is a wonderful service for managing and understanding a household income, but as Jeff noted, only one person can access the account, which means that only he or his wife can access that financial data… not both. Can we design tools and services that are, by design, made for small groups rather than singular users?

PRIVACY 
An obvious consideration, that still needs considering. I don’t envision this being a place where comprehensive data is made public or even a required part of the system. The savings information that is immediately necessary is “what is your goal” and “how much do you want to save?” This is a model similar to Kickstarter rather than Blippy. The other thoughts around privacy are these: to what extent does this demographic - people who have grown up with social technology- care about privacy? Does sharing of savings goals and the act of depositing money towards a goal help keep them accountable and give them a greater awareness of what one could (or should) be saving for? When talking about the social motivations and boundaries of information sharing in my thesis, I often use Weight Watchers as an analog. How is it that groups of women, who, under most circumstances will not go near a conversation about weight, come together and not only talk about their weight, share their struggles with losing weight, but also support each other as they work towards their weight loss goals? All of this is done in an open environment where women are encouraged to share only what they feel comfortable sharing and what will personally motivate them. There are few things more uncomfortable and personal than talking about money. Weight, especially for women, is one of them. Weight Watchers is one example of a service who has made the issue of privacy a non-issue. They have achieved this through by providing a framework through which communities can motivate and support each other and individuals can work towards personal goals in ways that are meaningful to them. WW gives users control of the information and also a platform to communicate this information. These insights are driving my decisions around privacy and information sharing.

Jeff and I also talked about business models, continuing use of the service once a goal has been reached, collective lending strategies and some other things that have, by now, slipped my mind but are certain to reappear in future posts. It was a great day. Stay tuned.