Starting out on one of my UX Design program’s capstone projects, I had an idea. I wanted to create an educational investing platform. Not just as a concept project, but a real platform. A place people could visit and learn about investing in the stock market.
Rather than getting outdated or bad advice from their parents or random family members.
The idea for this educational investing platform has been a slow simmer. I’ve always had an interest in personal finance. I ran my own personal finance website for two and a half years. Weekly articles were published on debt payoff, student loan strategies, money mindset, and general personal finance. I loved it! Eventually, the writing stopped. I moved on to other things. However, the interest still remained.
The initial idea
One of the main ways everyday people can build long-term wealth is by investing in the stock market. The S&P 500 has returned an average 10% return over the long-run. Most people don’t get an adequate explanation on investing in the stock market. You might get advice from your dad or your dad’s friend of a friend who ends up saying a bunch of confusing jargon.
I never had a solid financial education. I started investing in the stock market when I was 14 years old. I poured part of the money I had saved up from chores and one-off jobs into a brokerage account at Edward Jones. I cringe thinking about it now. Edward Jones isn’t a good brokerage to do investments with. The only reason I started there was because it was located in my small town and my parents used them. A seemingly friendly advisor said a bunch of confusing jargon and talked about how good he was at picking stocks.
Years later, through my own research, I discovered Edward Jones advisors are not fiduciaries (advisors required to act in your best interest). They often push investments they get commissions from, have high advisory fees (1.35%) and have several hidden costs.
I’m not alone. Most people don’t have a solid financial education. They don’t know how to use their workplace 401(k) plan or what an IRA is (it’s an individual retirement account).
Current solutions
So people often are confused even after doing research. I sure was when I first started out.
- What is a 401(k) plan and how do I choose investments inside of it?
- Isn’t investing risky? I don’t want to lose money!
- What is an IRA? A Roth IRA? Traditional IRA? SEP-IRA? There are so many IRAs!!!
- How much do I need to invest every month?
- People keep saying I should set up auto-monthly contributions, what if I can’t contribute monthly?
- What do I do if my workplace doesn’t offer a 401(k) plan???
- I don’t even know what I don’t know! Ughhhh.
Two main solutions: financial coaches and robo-advisors.
Robo-advisors such as Betterment and Wealthfront have popped up to make investing seem easy. All you have to do is answer a few questions and they create an investment plan for you. Several financial coaches have popped up over last few years as well. These people aren’t certified financial advisors (CFPs). They’re usually an accessible way for people without a ton of assets such as student loan ridden millennials and gen z-er’s.
They help you create a budget, build a debt payoff plan, and save money. Some of them offer courses on investing. The ones I’ve seen range from $79, all the way up to $597. Courses that teach you what investing is, types of investment accounts, how to choose investments, and managing investments.
So, if you’re confused about what the heck a 401(k) plan is or how to choose investments for it, you can buy a course. If you decide to not buy a course and just wing it, hopefully you’re able to learn somehow.
You can sign up for an individual retirement account (IRA) at a robo-advisor such as Betterment or Wealthfront. But what about if you have a workplace 401(k) plan? Unless your workplace 401(k) provider uses Betterment or Wealthfront (they usually don’t) you’re out of luck.
At age 21, I had a 401k through my job, but had no idea how to actually pick investments inside the account. The same thing for the Roth IRA.
After a while, I learned using a robo-advisor for a tax-advantaged account (401k, IRAs) isn’t really necessary. You pay them a 0.25% advisory fee and they turn around and invest your money into low-fee index funds. You could just cut out the middle party and go invest in low-fee index funds yourself.
But how? What funds?
This is what stumps people. Then they learn about reinvesting dividends, stock to bond allocation, and rebalancing. It makes their head spin.
Planning things out
One of my Designlab UX Academy capstone projects was to make a mobile app solution. While I am planning to start investing educational platform as a website first, designing a mobile app was interesting. Learning icon sizing, different design guidelines for iOS and Android, and how the content would fill a small phone screen would be a learning experience.
You can view the case study in my projects to see the full UX Design process done to figure out the foundation of the platform. The UX research involved initial competitor research and conducting user interviews with four participants to find out their viewpoints on money, how they handled money while growing up, and what they do to manage their money. Sitemaps, user flows, and wireframes were done to get a feel for the flow of the site. Nailing down the main user journeys.
It was definitely a different experience doing a case study on something I want to turn into a real platform versus a concept project. The user interview questions were iterated on several times with my design mentor to make sure I asked cohesive questions that would yield in-depth answers.
Features and monetization
The main piece of the platform would be the investing course. I’m thinking it could work as an email course of no more than five days. You would get one email a day detailing the importance of investing and how to actually do it. Recommendations, tips, and advice infused in the content.
As for making money, it would be done via course price and affiliate marketing.
I’m cautious about what products I would recommend for affiliate marketing. I would only want to recommend something that is actually a good product. Luckily, this being a side project, I don’t have to focus too much on monetization. The main goal is to be a resource for people to learn how to invest in the stock market via low-fee index funds.
When is launch?
I have no idea about this, haha. I do want to get a small solution out soon. I’ve been obsessing about the website format but since the main course would be in email format, I think I could just build a landing page in my email marketing provider and connect it to the web domain. I’ll have to check to see how to do that.
Pulling everything together
So, I have my mission statement: helping people invest in the stock market via index funds for their tax-advantaged accounts (401k, IRA). I’m really happy with the branding kit I created for the platform. Now, I just have to continue working to get a solution out into the open. I’ll keep you all posted!
