Money Stories: Dr. Lili Sussman, Chief Strategy Officer, WISR
Through the course of your career and life you come across some exceptional people. For me, Lili is one of them. She’s the Chief Strategy Officer at WISR and the co-creator of the WISR Today app. An app that uses the power of behavioural science to help you understand your relationship with money and build healthy spending and saving habits. Lili has diverse international experience across the public, social purpose and corporate sectors. She has worked with government, international development organisations, BCG, and the Commonwealth Bank. Prior to Wisr, Lili was the Chief Strategy Officer at Social Ventures Australia. Lili holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard and Yale. We met a few years ago and I immediately recognised her as a soul sister with a shared passion for financial wellbeing. She’s pretty darn impressive and today she shares with us her personal money story.
Tell me a little about how and why you came to be the Chief Strategy Officer at WISR?
I joined Wisr because it was purpose-led.
Financial health (and wellness) is an important part of life, and is part of our overall flourishing and wellbeing, whether we enjoy thinking about money or not. The financial sector has been so focused on providing traditional financial services around credit, payments, investing, etc., that no one has thought enough about what actually helps people with their wellbeing, which is less about numbers and dollars and more about real life goals, emotions, values, and habits.
Wisr was willing to think differently about the sector and the role of a fintech in solving for a deeper problem - helping people with everyday money behaviour and their true relationship with money.
I’ve worked across the globe in many private and public sectors, and human flourishing is always the center of the problems I love to work on. I think business can be a force for good, regardless of whether you are in public, not for profit, or commercial sectors, you have an opportunity to focus on human wellbeing and make the world a better place. Conscious capitalism is not a nice to have, there should only be purpose-led companies. They outperform non purpose-led companies in terms of long term shareholder return, and my hope is that more and more leaders feel increasingly entitled and empowered to say: I will only work for purpose, and I will use my gifts to create a positive impact.
You've recently launched the WISR Today app - a first of it's kind money coaching app. Why did this app need to be created?
Wisr Today is like Noom for money. Noom is a weight loss app that’s swept the globe because it took a different approach to an established problem. Many of us want to lose weight, but dieting and exercising isn’t so easy. Noom focuses on the psychology of our behaviour, not just on diet and exercise, and it’s found incredible success, because it addressed the root cause of entrenched habits. Many of us also want to feel more secure and more free, and have more money and grow our wealth. Lots of money and banking apps out there focus on just our money, and on financial services, just like diet and exercise, but nothing focused on the root cause of entrenched habits. Everyday money habits can be helpful or unhelpful to our leading a life aligned with our values, and to change them, we have to use psychology and the science of the brain, because that’s the root cause of our behaviour.
So Wisr Today is to money what Noom is to weight loss - it’s a psychology based approach that uses tech and science to create true behaviour change, and rewire money habits. It’s 5 minutes a day - snappy and fits into everyone’s busy schedules (because we’re all very busy), and it’s a global first, and just been launched in the Australian market after years of R&D and beta testing.
Fast forward 5 years from now, what do you hope the impact of WISR Today will be?
Our hope is that Wisr Today is a household name, touching millions of lives and helping everyone build not financial literacy but true financial health, which means mindset as well as behaviour, which leads to great outcomes and greater contentment.
We also want the cultural conversation around money to shift - from this misunderstood taboo thing that feels like it’s about numbers and math and complicated things, to talking about money as related to our values and emotions, as a resource we all know we need to and can learn to manage well.
We hope people will learn a lot about money psychology and their own habits and values, and we’ll be having a very different conversation in the culture about money. Financial empowerment isn’t winning the lottery or gambling through crypto and other hopes for getting rich quick. It isn’t chasing the right investing tips or credit card rewards. It’s about figuring out your personal values and goals, and progressively aligning your money habits to what matters deeply (not shallowly) to you.
Finally, our hope is that the rest of the industry takes notice and starts to focus on financial health, just not just financial services, and we see a lot more innovative that focuses on deep wellbeing - not budgeting or dashboards with passive information about how much you spent on the category of entertainment, which there is a lot of today, which does not move the needle because it doesn’t change behaviour or mindset. We can learn a lot from healthcare and healthtech, and we should integrate money into people’s lives - because we have one brain and one life to live.
That's awesome. Now, let's get a little more personal. What's your earliest money memory?
My earliest money memory is immigrating to the US from China when I was 8 years old, and hearing my parents talk about how they sold all our belongings and packed them into two suitcases, and how that was everything we had when they moved across the world and started over.
I know you're a very money savvy individual. Was there a particular moment in life where you decided to make your financial wellbeing a priority?
I’ve actually been rebelling against perceiving myself as money savvy, because it was a reaction against how much my parents struggled with scarcity and how important it became in our household, which I always felt overemphasised the need for security and more and more money.
So I’ve been responsible, and I’m grateful that my parents taught me at an early age never to spend more than I earned, but I try hard not to be overly focused on money, because if I’m focused on it, it’s usually from place of fear and scarcity, and I’d rather make decisions based on what will help me live my values (courage and wisdom), rather than basing decisions by thinking about what will be more money savvy, if that makes sense. That said, you know that financial health is a priority for everyone. Just like health, when you don’t have it - you really feel it, and when you have it, sometimes you forget to be grateful for it and notice it, and it’s all too easy to focus on what you don’t have. So financial health is super important, but it’s a means to help me live a purpose-filled life that’s focused on values, rather than the only way to feel secure, or something that I always need more and more of.
Is there anything you wish you could tell younger Lili about money?
I think reassuring her that education is the best investment and that investing in yourself is the best asset - I know that now, but having spent my 20s in school over and over again, I sometimes worried and or felt behind my peers who had been working and earning so much earlier, and I didn’t need to.
What’s the best piece of money advice you’ve ever received?
Two things:
Never spend more than you earn, and
Grow your wealth Warren Buffet style - dollar cost averaging investing in passive index funds (that’s fancy speak for: regularly save and invest into the same portfolio of index funds - that’s the most proven strategy for any retail investor, and don’t try to get fancy and outsmart the market and pick stocks).
NB: Not financial advice, just what I’ve found useful!
Confession time - what’s your favourite thing to splurge money on?
Healthy spending is spending that brings you true joy, rather than spending you regret. What brings me true joy is memorable experiences, and cultivating my interests. I love food for example, so I love to wander grocery stores and farmers markets especially for unique ingredients, so I can try them in my cooking.
Tell me about your proudest money moment?
Ironically my proudest money moment was when I realised I needed less than I thought. I was trapped in a gilded cage like so many of us, where I felt like I needed every last drop of my income, and that my family depended on it, then an accident happened to me (you can read about it here.)
And I suffered a brain injury and had to stop working, and I had no income protection so I lost the ability to make an income.
I couldn’t work full time again for years, but I realised that I didn’t need as much as I thought I had, and that my family’s happiness didn’t require quite as much money as I had thought. That was a huge moment, a huge realisation, that was so freeing from that point onward. My toddler daughter needed my relaxed attention, even my brain damaged attention, much more than she needed toys and ballet classes and expensive birthday parties and outings, it turned out. It gave me psychological freedom to change career directions, and to feel more free to focus on creating the impact I wanted to, rather than just work for more and more money.
If you won $100,000 today what would you do with it?
Good question…I think I could put it aside for my daughter’s education and invest it, or think about how it might be an incredible opportunity to show love for people who need it who come across my path. It would be actually amazing to have a fund just for random acts of kindness for friends and family and people who cross our paths in a meaningful moment - what an amazing feeling that would be, to have a fund just for extra generosity. It would feel so good.
Finally, tell me how do you use your money as a force for good?
It supports us to use our time to do good as much as possible. It also supports us to contribute to the causes we care about, habitat conservation and refugees and women’s rights. This is a deep question though, and I think it’s about all the good we can do in our every day lives - how can we use our money in a way that helps us be happy, be generous, be abundant - because we bring that kind of energy to our relationships and our work and interactions with everyone we touch each day. So I think money used in a way that fills our cup, and used with values in mind - means money becomes a resource we’re grateful for and appreciate, rather than one that we’re annoyed by or one where we feel like there is never enough. The average full time salary in Australia is just under $90k, and research shows our happiness doesn’t grow after your income hits a certain level (around there) - and so more money isn’t the answer to more happiness, though our culture tells us it is. Research doesn’t lie though - so that’s something to really think about in the context of our stressful lives. Money psychology is part of overall psychology, and managing our own psychology is the biggest thing we can do to support ourselves and our families, and has a big impact on our money and security and happiness.
I had the pleasure and privilege of being a Beta Tester (someone who gets early access to test the system) to the WISRToday app. It is a one of a kind. There’s no app, to my knowledge, like it in Australia. It’s one of the most affordable ways to gain access to money coaching and it really works. Here’s a link to the app if you want to explore it (no affiliantions or kick backs). WISR offers a free two week trial to all users. How cool is that?