The Curb-Cut Effect of Financial Planning Software: How Designing for the Overlooked Benefits Everyone

Most people don’t realize that one of the more powerful design innovations of the modern city was created for a very small, specific group of people. Curb cuts, the gently sloped ramps built into sidewalks at street corners, were originally designed to help wheelchair users navigate urban environments. Prior to their widespread adoption, sidewalks were a nearly impassable barrier for anyone in a wheelchair. The simple slope of a curb cut changed that. It restored dignity, independence, and access for people who had been excluded for far too long.

What happened next was surprising and is studied at colleges across the country, if not the world. Those same ramps began helping many more people than was intended. Parents pushing strollers, travelers dragging luggage, workers moving heavy carts, children on bikes or scooters, people carrying big packages, and eventually even delivery robots navigating city streets. The so-called “curb‐cut effect” is the phenomenon of designing for the margins and finding that you’ve improved the experience for everyone. There’s no lack of evidence.

It’s not just good will, it’s good economics. In the U.S., people with disabilities control approximately $500 billion in annual disposable income, and they’re far more likely to spend it in communities and systems that are truly accessible. Meanwhile, studies of transport and pedestrian access improvements have shown benefit-to-cost ratios of around 2.4 to 1 (and in some cases higher), meaning the benefits substantially outweigh the investments when accessibility is built in. In the end, designing for the most overlooked is not just the right thing to do, it’s the smarter thing to do. I believe financial planning software has as much reason to adopt the philosophy of accessibility as any digital experience.

How I was educated on the “cut-curb”

I was introduced to the curb‐cut effect by a college professor while discussing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and how it could apply to PlanTechHub. She’s the wife of one of our users at PlanTechHub. She showed me how the colors of graphs, the contrast, the patterns in stacked charts, the borders around segments, all of these seemingly minor things make a real difference for people with visual or cognitive impairments.

She said something simple but profound: “If you design a chart so someone with low vision or colour-blindness can read it easily, you’ve designed a chart that everyone can read more easily.” The graph that uses high-contrast borders, alternative patterns in stacked bars, and clear labeling isn’t just accessible. It’s better. She cared not just about “meeting requirements” but about dignity, inclusion, clarity. At the time I remember thinking she was doing a better job explaining this aspect of our design philosophy at PlanTechHub than I had done with years of thinking about it.

Who Financial Planning Was Really Built For

Modern financial planning was designed during a time when access to investment products was limited, when information was harder to come by, and professional advice was considered a privilege rather than a utility. Many of the industry’s foundations were built with a noble purpose: to help people manage complex financial matters responsibly.

But, as with many well-intentioned systems, the structure of the industry hardened around a specific type of client. Over time, most planning software, processes, and experiences became centered on:

• accumulated wealth
• optimization for near-retirement individuals
• sophisticated modeling
• confident investors
• advisors working with affluent clientele
  
  

That structure worked well for a certain segment of the population. People with assets. People with experience. People with time, willingness, and confidence.

But it left behind a massive population of people who felt intimidated by finance, overwhelmed by planning, or convinced that it simply wasn’t “for them.” Young professionals. Students. Working families. Gig-economy workers. People in transition. People who had made mistakes. People who felt ashamed of where they were. People who were simply trying to survive, not optimize.

These individuals didn’t just fall outside the financial-planning system. They started to avoid it entirely. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about their future. Quite the opposite. Many cared deeply. But the perceived distance between where they were and where they thought they needed to be felt too great to overcome. And in that gap, a dangerous belief formed: “I don’t belong here.”

The Industry Normalised Disengagement

Over time, the industry backed off engagement for this wider audience and accepted a participation rate that was too low. We came up with reasons: “People just don’t like to think about money.” Or, “You can’t help people who won’t help themselves.”

But what if we weren’t dealing with a motivation problem at all?

What if we were dealing with a design problem?

When someone walks into a building without a ramp, a person in a wheelchair isn’t unmotivated if they turn around. They’re responding logically to an environment that was not created for them. The barrier is real, and it is structural.

In financial planning many of the barriers are invisible, but they are just as real: complex reports filled with jargon. Dashboards that prioritise perfection instead of progress. Tools that require comfort with math, forecasting, and assumptions. Conversations that feel more like interrogations than partnerships. Assumptions that the user already knows what they want.

These are not neutral design choices. They shape who feels welcome and who turns away. And when the people who need planning the most are the people least likely to engage in it, we should not be surprised by the outcomes we see in society: poor retirement readiness, financial anxiety, chronic avoidance, intergenerational patterns of struggle.

This is not an intelligence problem. This is an access problem.

What Happens When You Design for the One Who Struggles Most

At some point in building PlanTechHub I had to confront a difficult question: Who is this really for?

Was I trying to build better software for people who already had great access to planning? Was I trying to marginally improve an already functional experience for a privileged group?

Or was I willing to redesign the planning experience around the person most likely to give up?

I chose the second path. It was terrifying and liberating, but I knew that by designing for them, I was making the experience better for the first group as well.

Because when you make that choice, you have to abandon the idea of the “perfect” user. You start focusing instead on the uncertain one. The hesitant one. The person who feels behind. The one who thinks, “I’m too late.” And you start asking different questions:

What would make them feel safe? What would make them curious instead of ashamed? What would make finance feel less like a judgment and more like a conversation? What would make planning something they could explore, rather than something they had to survive?

That’s when scenario-planning reveals itself. Instead of forcing people to commit to a single version of their future (“you’ll retire at 65, with $1.2 million”), scenario-planning allows them to test many ‘what ifs’. It removes the pressure of perfection and replaces it with curiosity and agency:

What if I change careers in five years?
What if I go back to school?
What if I relocate?
What if I care for aging parents?
What if I start a business?
What if a recession hits?

These are not academic exercises for most people. They are deeply human questions and traditional planning tools often hide from them because they are messy, emotional, and uncertain. But real life is messy.

So instead of forcing people into a rigid model, I wanted to create an environment where they could explore that mess safely. Where imagination was not an obstacle but an asset.

Everyone Benefits from Inclusive Design

I believe advisors should see Scenario-Planning software not as a replacement for their expertise, but as a way to unlock more meaningful conversations. Instead of fighting through assumptions, they’re able to meet clients exactly where they are in their thinking.

Families find a shared language for discussing dreams and fears. It not just a spreadsheet being reviewed; it's a story being written. That level of collaboration assists relationships in powerful ways.

High-net-worth individuals, who could already afford robust planning, discover something unexpected: they can test ideas with more freedom. They can visualise trade-offs. They can play with their future. Even for them the experience becomes more human.

That is the curb-cut effect in action. When you design for the person who struggles most, you end up making the system more flexible, more intuitive, more useful for everyone. Not cheaper. Not less sophisticated. Better.

This is not about lowering standards. It’s about raising access and as a result raising the bar for everyone.

Language as an Accessibility Ramp

If design ramps matter, then language ramps matter too. In the U.S., approximately 46 million people speak Spanish at home. That’s a very large market and more importantly, a very large group of people whose digital experiences are often less optimised for them. An experience, thus a company, that meets them where they live is far more likely to succeed than one that doesn’t.

That’s why PlanTechHub is actively working not just on Spanish, but on other languages; and not just for an international launch, but for Americans at home that do business or are from other places in the world.

When someone can engage in their language, the barrier falls. They feel seen. They belong. And in that belonging, engagement rises.

Language isn’t a secondary accommodation. It is a core feature of inclusive design. And once again, when you build for the language-marginalised, the benefits rip across the board: bilingual couples, households where English is a second language, children helping parents, and even monolingual English communities benefit from clearer visuals, simpler flows, and less jargon.

Scenario-Planning Isn’t the Replacement — It’s the Ramp

There is a fear in every industry that if you empower the consumer too much, you eliminate the need for the professional. But that assumption confuses information with wisdom.

You can give anyone a map. That does not mean they know how to cross a mountain.

Scenario-planning doesn’t remove the advisor. It amplifies their role. It allows them to step out of the role of “gatekeeper of information” and become the guide through possibility.

Instead of delivering a single “optimized” plan, the advisor becomes the interpreter of many futures. They become part strategist, part coach, part architect of human potential.

And when the client feels more involved in the planning process, something shifts psychologically. They become more invested in the outcome. Decisions stick. Behavior changes. Momentum builds.

The very thing the industry has struggled to achieve for decades, which is engagement, suddenly becomes more natural. Because people do not commit to outcomes. They commit to experiences they helped shape.

The Business and Human Case Finally Align

People sometimes assume that focusing on underserved populations is an act of charity, and that profit and purpose must exist in tension. But inclusive design has proven again and again that the opposite is true.

When you expand access, you expand opportunity. When you improve engagement, you improve retention. When you create emotional investment, you create long-term value. Better decisions lead to better outcomes. Better outcomes build trust. Trust creates longevity. Longevity creates sustainability for families and for firms.

And when the entire industry begins to create tools that are more inviting, more transparent, more empowering, the impact ripples far beyond individual balance sheets. It changes the culture of money itself. Instead of something to fear, avoid or hide from. It becomes something to understand, explore and shape intentionally.

That is not just good business. That is social progress.

A Challenge to the PlanTech Industry

The question facing financial services is no longer, “How do we improve our tools for our best clients?” The question is much more uncomfortable and far more important.

Who are we still designing around? And who are we still ignoring?

What would happen if innovation didn’t chase the top percentage, but instead looked toward the most overlooked? What would happen if we built systems that prioritised clarity over complexity, participation over perfection, and language over assumption?

Because when you create the ramp, you don’t just help the person in the wheelchair. You change everybody’s path. And in doing so, you change the direction of the entire street.

If the curb-cut effect changed cities, imagine what it could do for financial futures.

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