I've always wanted to control my finance, to know where goes my money and one important thing: forecasting. All sites that I've found over this feature as a paid one. Well, listen my plan:<p>#1. completely free personal finance (home budgeting) web app<p>#2. most web apps offer overcomplicated interfaces; I think I can create a much more simpler version with the exact needed features<p>#3. my app will not connect to your bank account<p>#4. with the possibility to attach documents to your transactions, you have all the control of your files (they will be hosted on your own google drive/dropbox account)<p>#5. ONLY oauth login with your google/dropbox account (login => a connection is made to your dropbox account, logout => connection closed, tokens destroyed).<p>#6. Hack-free web app<p>#7. Provide most useful features for a home budgeting app.<p>I am still thinking how to monetize this, because I don't want to put up any ad network (at least annual costs: 15$ domain + 120$ hosting)<p>What do you think of my plan? Would it worth pursuing?
I have no interest in knowing who you are, where you live, your name, address or any other personal info.
Look at YNAB.<p>However, what are you trying to forecast here? In terms of personal finance, the single most important thing to get right is the budget, which is more about planning, and not about forecasting. Everything else is nice, but unless you've got a solid budget module, the app will useless.<p>However:
> #3. my app will not connect to your bank account<p>Make sure you can process OFX, QFX, and QIF files so that users can clear transactions and reconcile accounts.<p>> #6. Hack-free web app
Big claim.<p>>I am still thinking how to monetize this, because I don't want to put up any ad network (at least annual costs: 15$ domain + 120$ hosting)<p>Why do you think forecasting is a paid feature? Your value proposition to me is not that it's free. It's the level of anonymity you offer.
For me, the key benefit of Mint and BillGuard is that they link to my bank account and categorize my transactions automatically. I have never been disciplined enough to enter transactions by hand.
<i>my app will not connect to your bank account</i><p>Without that feature you're expecting users to manually type all their transactions in to your app. Users, especially people who aren't already good at keeping track of their money, are often too lazy to enter data well, so any forecast you do based on their inputs will be wrong.<p>The pain point with managing your personal finances is maintaining a good record of the data. That's what you need to solve.
This actually sounds like a bunch of features I won't use, and you're excluding the features that I would want. I assume I'm not your target audience.<p>1. Nothing is free. Even if you provide it for free, there is still awareness, evaluation, switching costs, and long-term trust (that you will remain motivated in supporting this project across the next few years)<p>2. I think I can create a self-driving robot. If you think you can create a simpler interface, create a simpler interface. Put your money where your mouth is. Pics or it didn't happen.<p>3. If your service doesn't talk to my bank, how will it know where I'm spending my money? I've got better things to do than data entry.<p>4. What documents of my transactions? Do you mean your app will OCR my debit receipts? I'm paperless and try to avoid receipts, so I'd rather just have you talk to my bank.<p>5. Oh, I don't have to trust you with my bank info, but I have to trust you to login with my Dropbox/Google info? Those creds are more valuable to me. Why not just do local storage to a local Dropbox?<p>6. Accident-proof car!<p>7. Features like?<p>I don't mean to completely shoot you down; I merely want to deflate you a little. This granstanding post is quite the brag, but without substance it's meaningless.
Sounds reasonable but three points:<p>1. It's not anonymous. The ledger is enough to identify someone.<p>2. It's not 100% better than my current spreadsheet (one tab a month for the coming 6 months).<p>3. There's no motivation not to close it after a month I.e. no contract
I have considered doing this myself. I have used Mint for a long time, but more and more I feel they are trying to push other services on me. Not to mention it doesn't 100% fit my use case. I have also investigated other solutions, like YNAB as someone else mentioned, but never was impressed enough by them to spend money.<p>Ultimately, I decided I wasn't worried about it enough to dump my own time into it, but if it's something you're passionate about I'd say go for it, and I wish you luck!
I'm actually a YNAB user. My wife and I started using it recently and really enjoy application. The budgeting system works perfect but there are a few features I wish it did have.<p>1. Target goals - Take the thinking out of saving for a target, you should be able to tell the system I want to save x in y time and it should tell you exactly what you need and if you adjust your budget when the new target date will be.<p>2. I want to be able to enter my bills into the system when the arrive at my house and have it remind me to pay them X days before they are due. I don't want the paper bills sitting on / in my desk until I pay them (QuickBooks can do this).<p>Also checkout:
<a href="https://www.everydollar.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.everydollar.com/</a><p>I believe Dave Ramsey and his people have put this together is free unless you want bank connection BUT still makes the end user think and do some work. I a totally automated system is BAD as people put their fiances on autopilot.. this SHOULD require some work.
I also built a more slighter version for my personal use. You can check it out at <a href="http://www.moneytablet.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.moneytablet.com/</a>.<p>I know, UX is poor and options are poor but for me is perfect. I used it for over a year now, and it's useful enough to pay 5$/month on a digital ocean droplet.
Step one could be to define an open data format for personal budget data, like todo.txt for finances :)<p>Then you can simply submit PR's to current system open finance tracking apps, and you can sync state between with dropbox or syncthing or seafile or whatever
I’ve already built something similar to that 5 years ago. Currently it is only for Bulgarian’s local market, but it is behaving well in terms of popularity given the fact that I haven’t invested a single penny in SEO or marketing.<p><a href="http://mypocket.bg/" rel="nofollow">http://mypocket.bg/</a><p>You can check it out (use google translate to get the idea) we can partner in going international I’m now looking to raise an investment to rebuild and expand it. stoyan@dipchikov.com
Would you support importing transactions or bank statements?<p>How do I access my finances if I'm out and about with no internet connection? Or if I forgot to pay my fiber bill?
If you're going to do this, a lot of the guts are already available in the form of <a href="http://hledger.org/" rel="nofollow">http://hledger.org/</a> or <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/" rel="nofollow">http://ledger-cli.org/</a>. (Can't remember the license offhand, but you might be able to build on them)
So you want people to have to manually enter a transaction each time it occurs? This means keeping receipts that can easily be lost along with actually making the effort to do so. I dont see that happening.<p>Make it. If this is something you want to pursue then do so. You have nothing to lose(I hope you don't at least).
I would not use this app (due to #3) but best of luck and wishes for your success. There are very few such apps/services out there, and this market is in desperate need of disruption. I would love to see a real alternative to Quicken/Mint emerge.
Doesnt look like a problem worth pursuing in 2015. Take a look at <a href="http://www.ledger-cli.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ledger-cli.org/</a> and their libraries on github (there are haskell ports and a web frontend)
Hey man, I'm building something similar, I'd love to chat about it with you. Used to work at Intuit, came up with this idea, I've been working on this for 5 years, full time for two.
as someone in the fintech space I suggest you build it and check usage. I'd totally pay for this if it can do exactly what you say and is secure. Don't worry about the monetization. Any successful fintech app will get bought out, or there are creative ways to monetize we can discuss later. Shoot me a message if interested ali@sourced.fm
I think that's a smacking great idea! Have you considered a freemium concept where you could set a basic free package of features and then an enhanced set of paid features?
I'm not gonna tell you not to go for it. However, the reason most of the other apps connect to bank accounts is because that way they can actually get the whole picture information that's needed to make them useful. How are you going to get the transactions without connecting to their bank account? Have them enter the transactions? I'm going to forget, and I might have far too many to do by hand. I'll enter 3, mistype one, and then give up.<p>Also, the easiest way to monetize is for it to be paid. You did hard work; why shouldn't you be paid for it?