For personal account holders there are four different types of nudges:
- Date
- Pay day
- Excess balance
- Low balance alert
Each type is designed for specific reasons, and can be used in isolation or together.
Note, if you want to use the pay day, excess balance or low balance alerts, these all require linking your external current account(s) to the Marygold app, as the trigger events are based on activity in your current account(s).
If you just want a regular reminder based on dates (i.e. the date nudge), then there is no need to link your current account(s).
Date Nudge
A date nudge is a really simple date-based scheduled reminder, just like a recurring appointment in your calendar (e.g. remind me on the 1st of the month to save). These are good for people that want a regular gentle nudge, know how much they want to typically save, and don't feel comfortable linking external accounts to the Marygold app.
Date nudges are great, but the other nudges are really good.
Pay Day
A pay day nudge alerts you to a receipt into your external current account over an amount specified by you (e.g. alert me if my current account receives an amount over £1,500). These are good for people that want to save as soon as they get paid, especially if they want to save a certain percentage of their pay. The notification contains all the relevant information required to make a decision to save (e.g. balance, suggested amount to save, etc).
It requires an actively linked external current account to work.
Excess Balance
Excess balance nudges are designed for lazy savers! An excess balance nudge alerts you to a receipt into your external current account over an amount specified by you, just like a pay day nudge. However, instead of allowing you to specify an amount to save based on the payment amount just received, it looks at the balance of your external current account just prior to receiving your pay. It then allows you to specify how much of the 'excess balance' (excess because you didn't spend it), you would like to save.
It is basically designed for people that want to save but haven't a clue how much, and don't want to really think about it. It basically says, "save whatever you want, from whatever you didn't spend last month".
It requires an actively linked external current account to work.
Low Balance Alert
Try to guess what this nudge does! Yep, alerts you if the balance on your external account(s) dips below a level you specify. There are a few extra things to be aware of with these nudges though:
- You can create alerts against multiple external current accounts, so these can be helpful in monitoring bank accounts you use less frequently
- You specify what you think is 'low'. What is low for someone, might be high for someone else. Do what makes sense for you.
- You can specify multiple alerts against the same external account. For example, you might want an 'early warning' if a particular current accounts dips below £500, but another more urgent warning if it dips below £100. It is totally up to you.
Combinations
If you want to really shake things up you can use multiple nudges at the same time, then sit back and totally relax.
Let's look at a particular example. Assume you want to be disciplined and make sure you save a regular fixed amount of at least £250 every month as soon as you get paid, but you also know that your month-to-month finances change quite a bit (so you should be able to save more). Let's also assume that you are trying to be quite ambitious/aggressive with your saving (i.e. you really want to save the maximum you can), but you don't have an overdraft with your current account provider so want to avoid overdraft fees at all costs.
So what might you do?
- Create a pay day nudge for a fixed amount of £300 (note more than the £250 as the saver is trying to maximise the saving amount).
- Create an excess balance nudge to suggest sweeping 100% of anything remaining before pay day.
- Create a low balance alert set at £200 just in case too much was previously saved.
With the above combination, the customer will always receive a notification to save at least £300, but most likely each month it will be higher (since on pay day the suggested amount to be saved will be equal to £300 + 100% of the prior months excess balance).
This effectively turns into a very lazy way to save the maximum amount that you think you can for most months safely, without the minimum amount of thought or effort.
You also retain control each month whether you save or not (i.e. dismiss the notification), or whether you want to change the amount owing to a new expense you know you have coming up. All of the information you need to make the decision will be right in front of you in the notification.
Lastly, if mid-month you got it wrong, and spending is higher than anticipated, the low balance alert would kick in, allowing the you to move funds back to your current account.