Your brain + Nude = an unstoppable team.

In between your ears, there are 86 billion neurons that make up the wonderful world of your brain. It’s responsible for everything that makes you, you, and is more advanced than any machine on earth today (and hopefully always).

Inside this brilliant brain of yours is the ability to make decisions and create habits that help you reach your goals (y’know, like buying a home).

So with Nude, we use behavioural science to build features that nudge your brain towards smashing your deposit goal. It starts as soon as you set up your Nude account and keeps going until you’re ready to buy your place.

Setting you up for success

Over 380 tests have shown that goal-setting has a significant impact on your behaviour. And as we know, behaviour builds habits and habits create change.

In one of these studies, Dr. Gail Matthews — a Psychology Professor at Dominican University of California — found that people who write down their goals regularly are 42% more likely to succeed than those who don’t.

When you set (and refine) your goal in the Nude app, you go through the same process of writing it down. Every time that happens, you remind yourself of what you’re trying to achieve and you also think about what you need to do to get there. And as Dr. Gail pointed out, this could make you 42% more likely to reach your goal.

One app for one major life goal

Our brains associate spaces with different tasks and routines. You step into your office, your brain knows that it’s time for work. You hop into bed and you’ll start feeling sleepy (or have a sudden urge to rethink every embarrassing thing you did in the last 10 years).

The same goes for digital spaces. Every time you open Nude — the one app dedicated to buying your first home — you remind your brain that you’ve got a really important goal to smash. This keeps it at the front of your mind when it comes to choosing between that 2am impulse buy vs putting more money towards your home.

Something to be excited about

Cognitive Psychologist, Amanda Crowell, said that to reach a goal, you need to be doing it for intrinsic reasons. In other words, you have to really, really, really want it (zigazig-ah).

That’s why we show you how long it could take to buy your home and not just how much of a deposit you need to buy it. No one really wants to hand over a deposit worth tens of thousands of pounds. You want to own a home one day, and knowing roughly when ‘one day’ might be makes it way more exciting. When you’re excited by a goal, you’re more likely to keep at it.

Two sides of your brain, working together

A joint study by Princeton, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon University reported that your brain, when faced with instant gratification vs long-term goals, goes into battle with itself. The emotional side of your brain has a hard time imagining the future (so wants the reward now), where the logical side of your brain clearly sees the impact of your current actions.

For example — the logical side of your brain wants to put money towards your first home, but the emotional side of your brain wants to go to that karaoke bar for the third time this week.

Our job is to convince the emotional side of your brain to agree with the logical side of your brain, by giving it rewards every time you work towards your first home goal. Here’s how we do it...

Whenever you act on a personalised insight in the Nude app, or complete a challenge, you immediately see how much sooner you could buy your home. The logical side of your brain is happy with the positive impact on a future plan, and the emotional side of your brain gets instant gratification from seeing your time go down.

With two sides of your brain on the same page, you’re less likely to give into temptation and instead, stay focussed on buying your home.

Build better money habits

Buying a home is a huge goal, but it’s a goal that you can reach by breaking it down into small, everyday habits.

That’s what Nude is all about. Every time you complete one of our challenges, you achieve what’s called a ‘small win.’

“A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. ‘Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage,” one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. “Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favour another small win.’  says Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit.

In other words, when you accomplish something during the process of trying to reach a huge goal (eg: completing a challenge that helps you put more money towards your home) your brain wants to do it again and again and again. Next thing you know, your money-saving habits are *chef’s kiss*.

Share your goal

During the same study mentioned above, Dr. Gail Matthews discovered that 70% of people who regularly told their friends about their goals were successful, compared to 35% of the group who kept their goals to themselves and never wrote them down.

This is because, by telling someone, you feel more accountable. Plus, when you share your progress and accomplishments, you’re likely to get some positive vibes in return. And that’s the stuff of motivation magic.

We wanted to bring this thinking into the Nude app, so we’ve built some features around it.

First, ‘Team Up’. With Nude, you can join forces with your partner (or best friend/family member) to build the deposit for your first home together. You both have your own accounts, but can see your joint progress in one place and support each other all the way.

Next, there’s our ‘Share Goal’ feature. With just one tap, you can share your first home countdown to your Instagram stories, family WhatsApp group or whatever channel you like.

With Dr. Gail Matthew’s research to go by, these features could make you twice as likely to reach your goal.

Like we said, your brain is a pretty powerful piece of kit. And with Nude, there’s no stopping you from smashing your goal.

Want to try it out? Install the latest version of the Nude app now and start building your deposit-boosting habits today.