How do you manage your money? Qs & analysis paralysis

Eliska·May 30, 2023

I'd love to hear from you as I'm building a solution in this space and many of the women I know either don't talk about money with friends, suffer from inertia or general analysis paralysis around what's out there (I know I do).

Any thoughts or advice you have here as I try to work on something to encourage confidence and financial independence is appreciated!

What is your source of truth when making money decisions?
what tools do you use? (Apps, websites etc.)
how do you feel about investing? are you?
what is holding you back in making a next step or decision?
have you worked with financial advisors before?
would you use a chatbot to guide you or a website/fintech influencer/real human?

melaniecrissey·May 31, 2023

1. YNAB2. YNAB (budgeting), Marcus (HYSA), Ellevest (investing, learning), Carta (watching FMV on my small portfolio of exercised startup ISOs) and various online accounts for tracking my 401K and IRAs 3. Meh. I'm a "late bloomer" when it comes to investing. I'm not super confident in what I'm doing or the tax implications of anything. I have some ETFs and a few stocks I picked for fun, for example: my single share of NVIDIA that I'm especially fond of right now. My overall strategy is to invest consistently ($$$ per week) and don't touch anything. 4. Not sure I feel held back by anything at the moment. If anything, maybe lack of access to capital....? General cost of being alive with all this inflation out here?5. Yes, I've hired financial advisors and we meet quarterly to review retirement plans.6. I've definitely been *influenced* by the Fintech gals and girlies, so I'd say "yes" I'd use an influencer as a guide. I have been slightly less impressed with the results of chat bots and GPT-like tech. I imagine a chatbot might be frustrating to interact with and I'd have a hard time trusting their recommendations. Mostly, I prefer to *read* guides about how to manage finances but I find that most content online is either too hand-wavy or too jargon-y. You either have to already know what they're talking about OR you can get surface-level information without enough explanation to take action.Happy to chat more about this topic if you're doing user research!

Eliska·May 31, 2023

@melaniecrissey this is so awesome and really appreciate you giving me such a detailed response!! Yes totally agree on chat GPT it’s not there on finance yet and too general. For me personally I’m so overwhelmed by finfluencers and the way that competition for eyeballs with content is often not the most “sound” advice either. 100% would love to take you up on your offer, I’ll ping you a DM 🙏