FutureMoney already makes saving for your kid effortless.
A few dollars a payday, auto-invested, quietly compounding into a real head start. You made the mechanism feel easy — that’s the hard part, and you nailed it. But saving for someone’s distant future is emotionally flat: a number ticks up, the payoff is eighteen years away, and the feeling the parent actually wanted — that they’re doing right by their kid — never arrives. The part you haven’t designed: making that future feel real today.
I’m Carl. I run Sunday, product design for fintech, ex-Swedbank. I kept thinking about how FutureMoney could turn a flat number into a moment that lands — so I designed it. It’s live, just below.
The concept, running
It’s live. Tap through it — add money to Mia.
How I’d make FutureMoney the app that makes the future feel real.
The habit is the moat — you got parents to start. But the meaning is where it’s thin: a balance that ticks up $25 doesn’t feel like anything, and the payoff is two decades out. The fix isn’t a new product. It’s redesigning the moment around the deposit — who you’re on, what the money becomes, and the payoff delivered now instead of in eighteen years — on the surfaces FutureMoney already owns.
Four decisions, and why:
Who you’re on
Mia
Her head start · $1,840
Always on a child, never a balance
FutureMoney opens on a balance. I open on the kid. You’re always looking at Mia — her face, her name — not a number, because the whole reason you’re doing this is her, and the screen should never let you forget it. Same data, an entirely different feeling.
$25 today
Grows into a debt-free textbook.
The deposit becomes a real thing
$25 ticking up to $1,865 is abstract — it doesn’t feel like anything. So every deposit becomes a real thing in her future: a debt-free textbook, a month’s rent, a semester of books paid for. The number stops being a number and becomes something you gave her.
“Happy birthday, Mia — I started this the week you were born…”
From Dad · a note she’ll keep
Saving becomes a relationship
Each deposit can carry a few words she’ll read the day she opens this. Over eighteen years the saving quietly becomes a letter — a time capsule. It turns a transaction into a relationship, which is the one thing a balance can never be.
By the time she’s 25
$48,000
She’ll start ahead — because of you.
The payoff, delivered now
The reward for saving is eighteen years away, so the habit dies. I move the payoff to now: the moment after you give, you see what she could have by twenty-five — and one quiet line, “she’ll start ahead, because of you.” The feeling you were buying, delivered today.
Any app can make the number go up. The work is making a future eighteen years away feel real enough to keep going today.
A bit about me.
I’m Carl. I run Sunday, a product-design studio for fintech. Before this, Swedbank, one of the Nordics’ largest banks. I work embedded, like part of the team, from first research to the final interface. No handoffs.
I built this from the outside, on your product and positioning alone — no brief, no access. You’re clearly product-led and brand-strong, so take it as a conversation-starter, not a critique. With your real users and data behind it, it gets a lot sharper.
“He champions user-centered design without ever losing sight of how it drives real business outcomes. That balance is rare.”
Joackim Zwahlen — UX Lead, Swedbank
That’s the idea.
I made this because the problem stuck with me — a money app meant to give your kid a head start shouldn’t feel like a flat number. If it’s useful, grab 30 minutes below and I’ll walk you through where I’d take it. If you want it real, a two-week sprint makes the made-real layer production-ready in FutureMoney. If not, no hard feelings — I’ll be rooting for you either way.