Money Badges: Your Money Health Tracker

Goals have a weird way of tormenting us–for good–when we don’t complete them. From fitness to money goals, when left uncompleted they tend to bug us and pop up even when we move on to other things. Psychologists call this the Zeigarnik effect. The good side to this is you get reminded about pending goals and look forward to completing them.

In our daily lives, this effect is applied to get us to take certain actions. For example, an exciting movie trailer nudges the goal to watch the full movie. With the seed planted, your mind keeps getting bugged till you finally settle to watch the movie. It is the same principle advertisers use to nudge purchases. That’s a secret by the way.

Building upon this, we picked up the good sides of the Zeigarnik effect to create a gamified wealth-building experience. This has been bundled into what we call Money Badges. They help you set goals, take the first little step, and celebrate your progress as you cross milestones. With these milestone trackers, you will be bugged in a good way to meet investment goals that matter and keep your money health in check.

Money Badges: A little History

One fine April morning, in 2017, we launched an exciting feature called the Cowrywise Savings Score. This is a simple metric that shows how committed you are to meeting your saving goals. With 10 as the least possible score and 100 as the highest possible score, it helped create excitement for users–and still does.

For example, we have seen beautiful moments, as shown in the tweet below, of people celebrating their scores. We also have the story of a user who almost cried because their savings score dropped. What is your savings score by the way? Don’t worry you won’t be judged.

My Cowrywise saving score increased. pic.twitter.com/Ran6bvhriW

— M A C A U L A Y 🙂 (@Oreoluwa__M) March 19, 2019

Gradually, this grew to become a bragging right for many. However, there are so many things to celebrate as a user of Cowrywise. Like when you hit your first million or when you bring your entire circle to Cowrywise. Those, and others that will be stated later, are major feats that deserve some popping bottles, or rare badges in our case.

In building badges, we had a goal in mind. The goal was to redefine how you experience investing. Badges gamify investments, help you form better money habits and nudge you to meet important money milestones. With badges, investing becomes less about complex numbers and more about exciting goals.

What are Money Badges?

Currently, we have 12 badge types on Cowrywise–each with varying levels. These badges spread across your Cowrywise net-worth, returns, dollar investments, naira investments, Circles, referrals, and anniversaries. Collectively, they frame out a picture of your money health with the fitness score.

Badge Types

1. Money Stepper– to celebrate milestones related to your Cowrywise balance.
2. The Harvester– your investments are seeds. This celebrates the fruit of returns, your harvest.
3. Benjamin$– for the moments you go international and make certain deposits into your dollar fund.
4. Savvy Investor– the first-timer’s badge. It comes with your first mutual fund investment.
5. Brave One– this is specifically reserved for those who try out equity funds.
6. Pack Leader– topping a Savings Challenge is tough. If you top till maturity, you earn this.
7. The Benevolent– donations help change things as with our joint intervention at Sagbokoji. When you donate, you earn this
8. Anniversary badges– for those who grow with us. There are currently three of these badges.
9. Ambassador of Funds– asides the fee waiver you get, this gives you a bragging right that you actually helped Cowrywise grow.
10. Savings Score: the good old metric. It will still measure your performance with your savings goals

What badge do you look forward to earning? Drop a comment and let the games begin.

How do Badges Work?

When you hit a certain milestone, we’ll gift you a badge. Some badges are one-off, like the anniversary badges. On the other hand, there are others with power-up rings. By power-ups, we mean that certain badges have varying levels. These are quite interesting because the rings power up for every milestone associated with the goal. An example is with the money stepper, which powers up as you maintain a certain balance over a defined period. It even gets more interesting as these rings can power down when you fall short.

With badges, investing becomes less about complex numbers and more about exciting goals.

For context, badges are similar to your gym instructor pushing you to unlock new levels of (financial) fitness. And as it is with fitness routines, you lose shape when consistency is lacking, badges build consistency. Once you hit the milestone, a push notification is sent and the associated badge becomes active on your profile page. Also, you can view all badges–earned and potential ones–at any point in time by tapping the top right of your screen. It’s advisable to check them from time to time so you know where you stand and the next possible wins. The Zeigarnik effect!

Further, when a badge is attained or powered up, go on and share. We designed badges with the intention to help you brag. All badges are shareable on all social media platforms. So, don’t keep your achievements to yourself. The world needs to know how much of a great investor you are. Brag using the hashtag #MoneyBadges. Also, check it regularly to get some motivation.

Badges and your Money Health

As wealth managers, we love to keep you abreast of your progress with the regular financial jargon. Badges make that happen with ease. Using a tailored in-house grading system, an evolution of the Savings Score, we designed a new metric known as Money Health.

Money Health goes beyond your Savings Score to gather all other wealth footprints across Cowrywise. Then, it blends all your progress efforts to present a simple fitness score. With this score, you get a clear picture of how your financial muscles are doing and what to do to boost them. If your money was a person, the fitness score will be their medical report and badges the recommendations to get things in shape.

In summary, the combination of badges and money health draws out a more robust picture of growth as opposed to just the Savings Score. Also, they set up a new path of wealth building with their habit-forming capabilities. We expect them to not only excite you but make investing more addictive–in a good way–and place you in at least the 70/100 Money Health Circle. Have you checked your Money Health today? Drop your score in the comments.

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How Cowrywise Badges Help You Achieve Your Financial Goals