We need to talk about money

At The Nursery, we have a long history with money. Our very first client was in financial services (hello Direct Line!) and over the years we’ve conducted hundreds of projects touching on every aspect of money and finance. We’ve continued to focus on insurance (DLG, More Than, Compare the Market), looked at pensions and investments (Vanguard, Fidelity, Legal & General), explored the growth of money management and banking services (Monzo, Santander and Virgin Money) and have lifted the lid on the world of advice and regulation (MaPS, FCA, CASS).

We speak to those with very little money and those with more than they’ll ever need. We discuss ideas with people on universal credit and with institutional investors managing pension funds worth billions. And even when it’s not a specific project or category that has anything to do with money directly, the conversation always seems to end up there eventually. Put simply, we’re always talking to people about money.

These conversations are often complex. Money and decision making is full of strong emotions – from pride, happiness and satisfaction to anxiety, shame and guilt. Money is taboo – as a culture we do not discuss money easily, especially money failures. Money is competitive - even ultra high net worth individuals know someone with more than them. And money is a reflection of identity - our Generations Study in 2023 explored ‘signifiers of a successful life’ and for Gen Z the number one signifier was wealth.

In the 20 years we’ve been discussing financial decision making we’ve learned a few things about the best ways to run research:

Money Stories
Money is complex and doesn’t always lend itself to binary questions. This is one reason we’ve developed our new ‘Storybook’ methodology, where we set a topic and allow people to translate it and discuss it in any way that they want. We deliver Storybooks of unfiltered responses as well as using AI and data analytics to uncover patterns and themes. This is open-source research, an opportunity to let people talk about the things they actually care about and it’s up to us to interpret that understanding into meaningful actions.

Test as well as Ask: People often over-claim their financial comprehension and confidence levels. We know this because when we add mini-tests to our surveys, just to check real knowledge against stated knowledge, we frequently find disparities. We tend to find younger people (under 40) under-performing against their stated levels, and older people over-performing.

Scenario Building: money is an emotional topic and we need to build question structures that tap into these emotions without hindering response. For all sensitive topics we have developed a scenario building technique where people can respond to a pre-determined situation and talk us through their decision making. This works across qualitative and quantitative methods.

Peer Interviews: While people feel awkward discussing money, they equally find it liberating to have the opportunity to do so. We find, in our qualitative sessions, that people are most happy to chat in the presence of a peer: a stranger but someone in similar circumstances to them i.e. similar age, lifestage, income and even knowledge or confidence.

Longitudinal Methods: Most topics are better informed when we use longitudinal approaches and this is especially true for finances and decision making. This involves recruiting people for a period of time rather than a specific research session. So we might recruit people for a week or two, and engage with them via different tasks and methods across that time. Or we might recontact survey respondents based on their as well as use AI prompts to encourage deeper participation.

In addition to our core research studies, we also run thought leadership programmes that explore the world of money.

The Investor Index is a study we co-author with communications agency AML. The aim of this annual study is to understand how investor confidence fluctuates year on year, and how different events and trends affect this.

Our biennial Generations Study, explores the difference between Generations in attitudes, views, beliefs, trends and behaviours. We cover a range of topics including money as well as health and relationships, political and cultural views,  employment and technology.

To hear more about these approaches and ideas and how they can help your business, please contact hello@the-nursery.net.