Debt_Debbie100

That's a great question, probably the biggest existential question for our business. Our perspective on this is twofold:

1. We're willing to take a revenue hit where we don't believe a refinance is in the best interest of the consumer. We actually block this feature for a big chunk of our customers because we want to make sure it's actually relevant for them. That being said, we also reward people as they pay down the loan, so that they are incentivized to continue paying down debt
2. We are looking to expand to other products right now that are not credit-related, such as HYSA and others.

It's a fine line we have to play with all the time and we're super aware of it, and are transparent to our users about how we make money.

Interesting, would love to see those articles. I think we often find the bigger question is if its positive selection or whether we are actually having an impact. I believe Noom faces the same question (i.e. is it that the people who complete Noom lose weight because they are the type of people to be more engaged in the process, or did Noom do a good job of engaging them).

We do find there's a correlation between engagement and debt payoff, and so whatever we can do to engage people usually results in movement in the positive direction.

I do not - I wish I did. Just read a ton of books on the subject and work with people who are experts in psychology to write our content (one of our advisors has his PhD in behavioral psychology from Princeton and is the Director of Product and Growth at Noom).

The folks at Cornell reached out to us when they knew what we were doing and so we are now collaborating on a real study. Maybe my next gig, once we make Debbie hyper successful, I'll go get an actual degree in psychology :)

Right now it's for debt payoff, but we are looking at launching a version of the curriculum that focuses on saving for long term goals. I definitely think I would be a beneficiary of such a program, mainly because I'm not currently in debt but I myself learn a lot from creating the content. I'd like to save more myself and I imagine we could help folks do that with the program.

Well...psychology is a real thing. And it applies to pretty much everything you do. To money, eating, working out, daily habits.

So it may sounds fluffy, and some of the way we think about psychology is definitely fluffy, but that doesn't mean it's not effective.