Research
Research on money as a health behavior
We study how stress becomes spending, how wealth buys years and years build wealth, and whether money that understands context can help. We publish our methods, our data, and our results, including the ones that don’t flatter us.
Survivors per 100 born, by age · 2024 U.S. life tablesBright Black Americans · Dim tips the gap to White Americans
Working paper · October 1, 2026
Years and Dollars
Longevity, the Black–White wealth gap, stress spending, and the design of stress-aware money. We trace how survival gaps enter wealth gaps, extend the accounting to women, Hispanic and Native Americans, disability, gambling, fees, and values, and describe the explainable engine behind Vueni.
The Understanding Company · 42 min read · 54 references
Focus areas
Three questions run through our work.
Wealth gaps
Eight gaps, one set of forces.
Longer or shorter lives change how far wealth must stretch, chronic stress drains it, and products that profit from hard moments widen gaps fastest where there is least room for error. Vueni uses none of these characteristics as an input; we name them so we can measure whether it narrows each one.
01
Women
16.7 vs 13.4
Expected years after 67 for a woman and a man alive at 22. Older women are poor at 11.0%, older men at 8.5%.
Forecast, Pots, and Calm Mode
NCHS 2024 · KFF 2024
02
Hispanic Americans
22%
The typical Hispanic family’s wealth as a share of the typical White family’s, against 17.5 expected years after 67.
Forecast, Pots, and interest-free savings
Federal Reserve SCF 2022 · NCHS 2024
03
American Indian and Alaska Native people
71.1 years
Life expectancy at birth, the shortest of any group. Older-adult poverty is 17.4%.
The same protections; we flag the measurement gap
NCHS 2024 · KFF 2024
04
Disability and mental health
25.3%
Working-age people with disabilities living in poverty, against 11.4% without. 93% of people with mental health problems spend more when unwell.
Calm Mode, guardrails, cooldowns, a partner you choose
UNH Institute on Disability 2025 · MMHPI 2016
05
Gambling harm
−2.75 points
Average credit-score change where sports betting moved online, alongside more bankruptcies and collections.
Network blocks plus detection; a seven-day cooldown
Hollenbeck, Larsen & Proserpio
06
Penalty fees
79%
Share of overdraft and nonsufficient-funds fees paid by the 9% of accounts that overdraw most often.
A forecast that warns before a shortfall; essentials always clear
CFPB 2017
07
Values-based exclusion
5%
Adults without an account in developing economies who cite religious reasons for not having one.
Values mode: interest-free savings and giving rules
World Bank Global Findex
08
Age
$39,000
Median wealth of families headed by someone under 35. Costly financial mistakes cluster among the young and the old.
Smart Nudges and consent-based partners
Federal Reserve SCF 2022 · Agarwal et al.
All research
Newest first
How we publish
Methods in the open
Every number we compute ships with the script and the public data that produced it.
Results either way
We pre-register outcomes and publish them whether or not they favor the product.
Real sources only
Every citation is checked against its source, and every quoted figure against the text.