What

Aura Finance is an SF-based mindful money management platform designed for both wealth and wellbeing. The platform provides investment portfolios and management, content modules on money mindfulness, and a community of fellow users navigating similar financial concerns. Founded in 2021, Aura is currently conducting early-access tests to select users. 

Why

Aura’s ethos centers around the concept of financial mindfulness, which is based on awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of one’s financial situation. According to Courtney Cardin, Aura’s Co-Founder, many US consumers can engage in high-awareness or high-acceptance practices, but often lack the ability to merge the two. A consumer can be high-acceptance by putting their credit card bill on autopay, for example, while a different consumer—representing the 33% of US bank customers who do so—might check their bank account every day.

Aura thus approaches finance from a behavioral-psychological perspective. Cardin and Kelsey Willock, Aura’s CEO and other Co-Founder, realized that long-term financial health centers around emotions, not just numbers. 

“We're speaking to people that have been unspoken to and felt like they had no autonomy over their financial decision making, or on the flip side, they are completely avoidant over it,” Willock said. “So they overspend, they don't look at their bank accounts, they definitely don't think about the future, and that gives them this sense of existential dread in both the current moment and the future. When they talk to us, they feel a sense that maybe things are going to be okay.”

How

The platform uses content as a core part of its product and as an opportunity to deliver broad-based as well as tailored content. Willock and Cardin have developed personality assessment tests for their users, which help Aura’s team push content to individuals based on their personality type and their specific financial and mindfulness needs. 

Another key component of their content-focused strategy is Aura’s newsletter, “Not your boyfriend’s investment advice.” The newsletter, written by Cardin, often focuses on how emotions and finances are showing up in her life that week, and features reminders and mindfulness challenges. With a greater than 50% open rate among Aura’s membership (who are primarily women), the newsletter has been a successful engagement, feedback, and community-building tool in the eyes of Aura’s co-founders. 

The beta test has helped Aura’s leadership change strategies based on tangible feedback. Users want more granular details on their holdings, for instance, as well as more guided feedback on how to have conversations about money with partners and relatives. They also wanted more personalized content based on their personality type, leading Cardin and Willock to add a “For your Aura” section in the newsletter, which features news stories that should appeal to different personality types. 

As Aura scales, the co-founders expect their high rates of engagement and number of super users to continue driving user-driven content and product changes. In turn, these users can anticipate learning more about the benefits of financial mindfulness—a balance of awareness and acceptance—for different use cases and personality types. 

“Being able to explain what financial mindfulness is and how it can be used to improve your relationship with money and ultimately make it easier for you to manage money and grow your wealth is key to our process,” Cardin said.