Smarter Financial Life: Rethinking personal financial planning

Abstract

An increasingly complex landscape of financial products, in combination with a falling provision of social security, increased life expectancy, and persisting financial illiteracy, calls for a reevaluation of personal financial planning. Currently, personal financial advice is offered predominantly from an institution's point of view, neglecting the personal point of view. We introduce a comprehensive, integrated, and interactive application for financial planning, which defines a person's life in terms of financial items and highlights the interactions among individual financial items and their impact on personal wealth. As individuals make decisions, their financial items interact according to a set of rules. Over time, events occur and global influences determine the growth rates of financial items. Our financial life model, which is accompanied by an interactive visualization and comprehensive analytics, enables financial planning in terms of life choices. Consequently, financial planning will occur from a personal point of view rather than a corporate perspective. This paper introduces our Smarter Financial Life project as well as an early gamified prototype, which has been presented at an Australian conference.