The Money Advice Service (MAS) is an independent service, set up by government, to help people make the most of their money. They provide free, unbiased money advice to help people across the UK make informed choices. A range of information and tools are available from their website, including an online Budget Planner. This tool, with is accessible to all, provides a snapshot of users’ finances and breaks down spending into categories such as household bills and leisure. Users are then directed to tips and advice on how to manage their budget and make the most of the money they have, or to deal with a budget deficit.
Winning Moves was commissioned to design and deliver the evaluation of the Budget Planner for MAS. The main objective of this evaluation was to understand how and why financial capability outcomes are improved (or not) through use of the Budget Planner, and how outcomes for users of this tool could be further improved. The evaluation explored whether specific triggers might lead people to use online tools, and whether there are specific outcomes that are most likely to emerge following use of the Budget Planner.
The evaluation found that using the Budget Planner can help people, in certain circumstances, to make significant changes to rebalance their income and expenditure. There was some indication that participants who had made changes to their spending, having used the Budget Planner, were starting to feel the benefit of those changes three months after use. We theorised that medium- to long-term outcomes could arise from short-term use of the Budget Planner. Some recruited users continued to report financially capable behaviours three months after using the Budget Planner and felt that they had more money in their pocket as a result, despite only having used the Planner at the start of the research period. We made suggestions for refining the Budget Planner to make it more widely used.
The full report can be found here.