NestedFunds
Role: UX/UI Designer & Design Lead | Timeline: 3 weeks Tools: Figma, FigJam | Team: 3 designers
Helping Families Plan for the Financial Future of Aging Parents
NestedFunds is a financial planning web app designed to help adult children navigate the complexities of supporting their aging parents.
Planning for a parent's future can quickly become overwhelming. Families may need to think about retirement, healthcare, unexpected expenses, debt, and long term care, often without having a clear picture of what those decisions mean financially.
NestedFunds was designed to make that information easier to understand, easier to discuss, and easier to act on.
01 — The Problem
When Helping Your Parents Becomes Financially Overwhelming
Adult children often want to help their parents plan for the future, but financial conversations can be difficult to start.
Retirement savings, future care costs, healthcare expenses, and what happens when unexpected financial needs arise often don't have a clear picture.
For many families, the problem isn't that they don't care.
It's that they don't know where to start.
When financial information is complicated, unfamiliar, or hard to share, planning can quickly turn into uncertainty.
The Opportunity
We wanted to create an experience that could turn complicated financial information into something families could understand together.
The goal wasn't simply to show users more financial data.
It was to help them understand what that information meant for their parents' future
02 — Discovery
Talking to Families Before Designing the Solution
Before opening Figma, we wanted to understand how Millennials with aging parents actually think about financial planning and their parents' future.
We conducted secondary research and surveyed 27 Millennials with aging parents to understand their concerns, knowledge gaps, and attitudes toward retirement planning.
We also explored how Millennials perceive aging and what makes conversations with their parents difficult.
What we found was more complicated than simply "people need better financial tools."
Families were dealing with uncertainty, emotional pressure, and a lack of accessible information.
What We Heard
Of Users’ families do not have a retirement plan
Of users want to guide their parents’ retirement planning
Health concerns were a significant theme. 52% of users worried about healthcare costs; they were also concerned about their parents' well-being due to chronic illnesses or decades of laborious work.
Deeper conversations are often hindered by pride (parents feeling they should know more) and fear of the unknown.
41% of users had concerns about inheriting debt, unexpected expenses, and managing parents' finances.
03 — Define
The Real Problem Wasn't Just Money
Our research showed that adult children weren't simply looking for another budgeting tool.
They were trying to answer a much bigger question:
“How can I help my parents prepare for the future without feeling overwhelmed by everything I don't know?”
That became the foundation for our design direction.
We needed an experience that could make complicated financial information easier to understand while still respecting the independence and dignity of the parent.
Meet Alejandro
Alejandro represents the core user we designed around.
As a first-generation American, Alejandro taught himself about finances and government assistance while trying to help his parents prepare for the future.
His parents have physically demanding jobs, and he worries about their long-term well-being.
But helping isn't simple.
Much of the financial information available to his family is difficult to understand, and communicating financial information across generations can create additional friction.
Emotional Journey
Alejandro begins with uncertainty.
He wants to help his parents but doesn't know where to start.
As he gathers information, he begins to understand the financial picture.
With clearer information and guidance, he can move from worrying about the future to making informed decisions about it.
That emotional shift became an important part of the experience we wanted to create.
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04 — Ideate
Lo-Fi
For NestedFunds, the lo-fi wireframes mapped out the intake form, financial dashboard, and recommendations flow without colors or visuals. This helped us focus on layout, clarity, and user flow before moving into detailed design.
Mid-Fi
The mid-fi wireframes for NestedFunds added structure, hierarchy, and early interaction patterns to our core screens. With clearer text and refined layout, along with placeholders for future content, we were able to test usability and make design decisions with greater confidence.
From Financial Anxiety to Actionable Information
Once we understood the problem, we focused on one question:
How might we make financial planning feel less overwhelming and more actionable?
Three core ideas emerged.
Feature One
A Simple Intake Flow
Instead of asking users to understand complicated financial terminology upfront, we created a guided intake experience that helps them enter important information about their parents and their current situation.
Feature Two
A Visual Financial Dashboard
We wanted users to see the bigger picture without having to interpret spreadsheets or disconnected numbers.
The dashboard brings important financial information together so users can begin understanding future scenarios at a glance.
Feature Three
Personalized Recommendations
Financial information becomes more useful when users understand what they can do with it.
We designed personalized tips to help families identify opportunities to reduce long-term costs and improve quality of life.