One of the things that made Fitbit so successful is the community that could be built around it by comparing steps and achievements.
It would be awesome to be able to win badges or something by sticking to your budget which you can use to compete with Your friends on.
Makes an output of the app shareable and gamifies something that is a good habit for people. Gives people who buy into the game aspect a reason to stay with you as well because once they collect some badges they won’t want to leave them behind.
The problem is it would be so easy to fake it, as I do with my Apple Watch. I set my move goal to 10 calories a day, which I get around 600 on a week day and 100 on weekends. So my streak is long. The same can be done to savings targets, by setting them high/low (however it would work).
I’m a big fan of gamification in general & I’d love to see Monzo continue developing features like Targets which have a practical purpose & I find, are also pretty addictive.
It looks like tracking your contribution to Monzo’s growth via golden tickets is on the way
It seems like there’s an obvious opportunity for 3rd party developers to get involved in this too & a couple of examples have been created already -
That’s not really a “problem” as long as the game’s awards aren’t turned into a sort of ‘currency’ by Monzo. If they’re set up for the user’s benefit & the user cheats them, then I guess that’s pointless but harmless
This could be a lot of fun, a fair few times Monzo has been described as a ‘Fitbit for my money’ by Monzo users!
I’d be really excited to see what cool stuff 3rd party developers create based on this idea.
Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of gamifying personal finance, I can appreciate the argument that it may seem like trivialising what is a very important service/responsibility. On the other hand, for some, incentives and shareability are aspects which could really help keep focus and determination in setting and sticking to budgets.
The two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive and I’m confident we can strike up a great balance between the two in the app
