3Strand’s Concept Features for Wesabe:
Future Forecasting and Education

We found that very few money management sites offer any form of future forecasting. Since these sites are supposed to be about making your life easier, we designed the Sneak Peak feature. It targets simple questions about the future that young people are already thinking (but feel clueless about), and allows them to map out the possibilities on an interactive graph.

“How long will it take me to be able to afford a house?”
“Should I buy or rent?”
“Is it better for me to maintain some credit card debt or pay it all off now?”
“How can I pay off my loans faster?”
“How can I save $2500 over the next 5 months?”

Based on stored information (eg. income, average monthly spending, APR), this feature gives you a non-intimidating way to calculate and play out potential future scenarios. Now you can explore different future paths and learn better ways to plan for it.

As with many other sites, our design also lets you set your monthly budget targets and see your status of spending in each category. Some sites are now able to provide a notification to you when you’ve exceeded your budget in a certain category. Unfortunately, this alone is not enough to help you understand what you can still do to rein in your overall budget. Most Generation Y users we polled said that they don’t mind if they overspend a bit in certain categories, but they still have a strong desire to feel “in control” of their money. Making money management more interactive and under your control, we introduce a new budget feature.

Halfway through the month and already overspent your monthly shopping budget? But perhaps you haven’t spent as much on going out to bars yet. Simply drag and drop the overspent box to reallocate the money to your budget for bars or any other categories you can try to cut back on for the rest of the month.

3Strand Concept Design - Budget

You will be notified if you are consistently overspending or underspending in certain categories, so you can tailor your budget to best fit your needs. This allows you to set realistic goals and have a clear picture of whether you are saving or exceeding your overall budget each month.

3Strand Concept Design - Budget Trends

Finally, what’s a realistic budget without adding in occasional guilty pleasures? Customize your My Guilty Pleasures list for items you will occasionally want to splurge on.  If you’ve been doing well with saving up, you randomly get pop-up rewards through Wesabe, allotting a portion of your budget to a guilty pleasure of your choice!

3Strand Concept Design - Guilty Pleasures

Next week, we’ll explore more concept features we’ve developed for Wesabe, focusing on building in support groups and competition elements to the user interface. We’d love to know your thoughts and ideas.