Couples across America are getting married later and joint financial priorities are changing – with the majority prioritising beginning climbing the property ladder before tying the knot.
But while financial dynamics in American relationships have quickly evolved, the financial institutions that meet couples’ needs have not. With dual-income households now the majority of couples’ financial statuses, couples collaborate on finances now more than ever before, creating a need for modern solutions tailored to their unique dynamics.
To meet this need, Plenty, a financial wealth platform, is now offering a free annual membership to use its budgeting and educational tools, making its platform, which previously cost $120 per year, more accessible for all households.
To enhance its impact, Plenty is also expanding its budgeting features and welcoming relationship expert, author and psychotherapist Esther Perel as an advisor. Perel will work with Plenty to develop features that strengthen couples’ financial and relationship health.
Since early December 2024, Plenty says these updates have resulted in eight times user growth – and the fintech hopes to continue this trajectory in the coming year.
“Every household deserves access to tools that empower better financial decisions — together,” explained Emily Luk, CEO and co-founder of Plenty. “By making our membership free, we’re ensuring that everyone, regardless of financial background, has equal access to the premium tools to grow wealth.
“At Plenty, we make money when our members grow wealthier. We make a low 0.20 per cent investment fee on our saving and investing products and we’re incentivised to help you save and invest more.”
Budgeting together
Plenty aims to help couples navigate the complexity of modern financial dynamics. It enables users to manage ‘what’s ours’ and ‘what’s mine’ with greater flexibility, empowering couples to choose which accounts and cards to share or keep private. When saving, couples can choose to use joint accounts or individual accounts to save their shared goals.
“Money is rarely just about dollars and cents – in relationships it can act as a mirror of our values, vulnerabilities, and power dynamics,” added Perel. “Couples often ask: What can we afford? What is shared, what is mine, what is yours? And how do we balance living in the present with saving for the future? As an advisor to Plenty I’m looking forward to bringing my relational expertise to these concerns, as Plenty builds the digital tools to help address them.”
Plenty’s new AI-enhanced budgeting platform makes managing money easier, more collaborative and personalised through AI-enhanced transaction categorisation and tagging for clearer insights into spending and less manual work, as well as custom categories and tags to organise spending around specific periods or goals.
Plenty also offers a range of investing tools, including a 4.4 per cent seven-day yield with Cash+ accounts; premium stock and bond portfolios with built-in direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting; and transparent values-based investing, with the same low 0.20 per cent fee for impact-driven portfolios.
