Do you want to be richer? And if yes, is your bank helping you become richer? I have asked hundreds of times around the world and if you're like 95% of people, your answers are "yes" and "no". After over 15 years of startup – this surprisingly (or not?) turns out to be one of the most consistent consumer responses I’ve ever encountered independent of age, demographic and country.

In a world drowning in more and more innovative complex financial products, most of us just want to live rich, confident lives without the confusion.

The 5 Functions of Money

My background is tech and startups so I know little about how finance “is supposed to work”. But a seasoned banker once told me: money is easy and ultimately can be broken down into only five core functions. I believe he was right – though ironically this is not how financial institutions teach people to think about money. In his view it all comes down to:

1. Move Money: Whether you’re paying a bill, topping up your stock account or sending cash to a friend, you’re moving money, irrespective of which channel (e.g. cash, cards, QR payments, bank transfers etc.)
2. Manage Money: Planning, budgeting and tracking methods – there’s a plethora of ways to understand (and impact) your financial situation.
3. Access Money: Being able to access additional money (at reasonable cost) when needed, from micro-loans to mortgages and beyond.
4. Grow Money: Using money to make money through various investment options ranging from stocks, funds, gold, land, crypto(?) and many more
5. Protect Money: Safeguarding against unexpected events primarily through insurance.

Understand these five functions, and you've got the map to master your financial life. It's that simple.

Tomi-ism: Timo's Balanced Life Philosophy

Before further delving into money and the five financial dimensions, I’d like to take a step back and introduce Tomi, Timo's mascot and the embodiment of our philosophy of balance (not just bank balances). Tomi knows that a rich life is a balanced one – and your bank account is just one piece of the puzzle to confidently live a rich(er) life.

Living with limited (ideally no major!) regrets beats a huge bank balance and the nagging feeling you have wasted your life at the end of it.

Tomi-ism, this philosophy, therefore, puts a rich life as a balanced life between:

• Wealth: Financial security and growth (possibly through Timo's services)
• Health: Encouraging physical and mental well-being
• Relationships: Facilitating strong connections with family and friends
• Lifestyle: Enabling experiences that bring joy and fulfillment (including a fulfilling job but also meaningful experiences, whether around learning, traveling or many other forms).

If our mission is to help you confidently live richer, we therefore cannot just look at your money; we must think about how to help you create a balanced, fulfilling life.

Healthy finances enable (but do not guarantee!) such a life. Starting with the money though, we want our customers to avoid common pitfalls. Examples include avoiding excessive impulse purchases that drain your account. Ignoring your future self by neglecting savings. Falling for get-rich-quick schemes.

This sounds obvious but is sometimes difficult to follow. Yet by keeping things simple and the big picture in mind, we believe that at least the worst mistakes can be prevented.

A simple radical idea: Better be Roughly Right than Precisely Wrong

After reframing the problem to not just financial management but overall confident rich living, it is time for a brutal reality check.

Everybody’s time is limited. So is our attention. And the world of finance is becoming more complex every day. We therefore believe that for most people in their search of living confident rich lives, being roughly right across all 5 areas is far better than being exactly right in just one and running out of time and energy to cover the other aspects.

We don't recommend obsessing over squeezing an extra 0.1% return on investments while ignoring high-interest debt or forgetting about proper insurance. We want to give customers a simple but comprehensive way first to think about those 5 money functions to avoid having huge blind spots and then focusing their time and attention on the area that has most potential impact on their lives.

Learning how to think about these money functions provides the basic guardrails that allow for healthy habits with low mental overhead – be roughly right about money instead of precisely wrong.

 

Assessing confidence through the Timo Time Horizon Test

Without delving into the details of our thinking on each dimension (which may follow in a later post series), in our conversations we find that the time horizons through which you think about your finances has a surprisingly revealing character to your overall situation.

Just think about where you are:

• Daily horizon: Unsure where your next meal comes from – why care about anything long-term?
• Weekly horizon: You may finally have some form of regular income, but it never quite seems to be enough.
• Monthly horizon: Things are starting to come together so the daily grind for survival is out but real accumulation and long-term planning seems a bit of a stretch too
• Annual horizon: at some point things really are not about the ongoing expenses anymore but rather about “the big things” like apartment purchases, long-term investments etc.
• Generational horizon: few in emerging markets are at this point but if you look at “old economies” around Europe – a lot of concerns are around how to protect and pass on wealth from one generation to another, not about how to finance any ongoing lifestyles.

As you progress, the "game of finance" changes, as do the right strategies. And generally, the further out you can think, the more financially confident you should be. Of course, there’s the odd delusional case thinking in decades whilst not having money for the next meal, but as a sanity check, this seems to pass the sniff-test.

 

Finance for the 99%: The Timo Promise

My primary job as Timo CEO is to increase Timo’s long-term business value. Often people think that means charging high fees or interest rates to maximize short-term profits. But I strongly believe that the way to do so is to help customers long-term confidently live richer lives. Create 10 in value and customers will happily share 1 with you. Therefore, as a company and personally, we're committed to helping you stop chasing the illusion of financial perfection and rather start living a confidently rich lower effort life today.

Our overall approach is simple:

1. Focus on the five core functions of money and make sure you’ve got basic coverage of all of them.
2. Guide you towards a life of no regrets, helping you avoid financial missteps.
3. Promote a balance between wealth, health, relationships, and lifestyle.
4. Help tracking your progress by realizing your realistic financial planning horizon.
5. Aim for comprehensive financial health rather than over-optimizing in one area.

Ultimately, your path to financial confidence should not require a degree in economics or a Wall Street job. It requires clarity, balance, and a commitment to long-term thinking – and if you need Timo’s products to help with that, great – but if you just need some clarity of mind, we’re happy to provide that too.

If you found this article valuable, please share it. Comment below with your biggest takeaway or also any contrarian views that help shape the dialogue. Who doesn't want to live confidently richer - but how? The topic is important enough to deserve a proper debate.