Ask someone how they’re doing financially, and you’ll usually get a vague answer. People talk about their health, their work, their relationships. But money stays private. Even when it keeps them up at night.
Financial stress is one of the most common sources of anxiety, and one of the least talked about. It reaches far beyond people with debts or payment problems. It touches anyone dealing with rising costs, an uncertain job, or a future that is hard to plan for.
Part of that silence comes from shame: admitting you’re worried about money can feel like admitting failure, even when the causes are entirely outside your control.
The numbers are clear
According to PwC’s 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey, 59% of employees say they are currently stressed about their finances. (source: PwC)
In the Netherlands, Geldfit.nl received over 3.5 million visits in 2023. Only 1.4% of those visitors went on to receive personal support. (source: Blanken.nl) That gap is telling. Even when help exists and is easy to find, most people don’t take the next step.
Meet Mick
Mick is a motorcycle racer. He works hard, lives actively, and by his own admission, makes the occasional impulsive purchase. After an accident, he found it harder to keep track of things, finances included. He had an Excel spreadsheet ready, a full monthly overview. He never filled it in.
Mick now uses Monny almost daily.
“If something is bothering you, you can just talk to the app. That brings peace of mind.”
One question that changes things
Monny asks a single question: how do you feel about your money right now?
It’s called the Money Mood Check. Users answer on a scale of 1 to 4. It first appears during onboarding and returns periodically after that, building a picture of someone’s financial wellbeing over time. The goal isn’t a single snapshot, but a trend: does someone feel better about their money the longer they use the app?
45% of users who completed onboarding rate their financial mood at 1 or 2 out of 4, meaning they feel bad or uncertain about their finances. On its own, that number may look discouraging.
But the data, drawn from the second version of the app, shows a clear pattern over time. Many users experience a slight dip early on, before the feeling rises steadily and settles at a higher point than where they started. On average, financial wellbeing improves by 16% during app use.
That dip resembles what’s known as the change curve, a model rooted in the work of psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and the related concept of the “valley of despair”: a predictable emotional low that tends to follow real awareness of a situation. Getting a clear picture of your finances for the first time can feel uncomfortable before it feels useful. People who move through that dip tend to come out the other side with more insight and more control.
Seen this way, the 45% reads differently: a sign that the app is doing exactly what it’s meant to do, helping people face their situation honestly, so they can move forward from there. And the 16% improvement is what happens next.
Early days, real proof
Monny is still building. The user base is growing, but the numbers are still modest, and Monny is working hard on refining the app.
A newer version of the app, live for two months now, gives an early signal of how much people return to it. Based on a small group of around 400 users, 26% are still actively using the app a week after onboarding, a figure in line with some of the best-performing personal finance apps. It’s early data, and the sample is still small, but it points to something simple: people keep coming back, a sign that the need for financial support is real.
What the early data shows is a real, large group of people who quietly worry about money, often without any financial problem to point to. People like Mick, who simply wanted a tool that did some of the worrying for him. “It’s genuinely worth the world to me,” he says.
At Shaping Impact we acknowledge the huge burden of financial stress and how it trickles down to each part of a person’s life. In order to build an equal society, we need to prevent people from getting into debt and developing financial stress over time.
