#1. completely free personal finance (home budgeting) web app
#2. most web apps offer overcomplicated interfaces; I think I can create a much more simpler version with the exact needed features
#3. my app will not connect to your bank account
#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)
#5. ONLY oauth login with your google/dropbox account (login => a connection is made to your dropbox account, logout => connection closed, tokens destroyed).
#6. Hack-free web app
#7. Provide most useful features for a home budgeting app.
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)
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.
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.
The pain point with managing your personal finances is maintaining a good record of the data. That's what you need to solve.
The reason that people need to manually enter in transactions is to they understand the operating balance, not the physical balance. When I pay my mortgage, there's a delay from when I submit the request to the lender to when the lender draws the money. For the duration of those days, the money may be in the account, but I need to ensure my finances take that into account. Otherwise, I'll submit a transaction, forget about, then buy something, and run into a bounced check or overdraft fee.
For example, I often examine my spending over a period of a few months to see how I'm spending my money and decide whether I want to make adjustments to my spending habits or budgeting. I can (and sometimes do) do this by exporting a CSV from my bank's website, but I like the convenience of using tools like Mint and letting them auto-categorize my transactions.
Not wanting to do the boring, not needed stuff does not mean that I'm not interested in personal finance, and don't want to know where my money is going.
I still I can lose 5 minutes every day to remember/type all my transactions.
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.
However: > #3. my app will not connect to your bank account
Make sure you can process OFX, QFX, and QIF files so that users can clear transactions and reconcile accounts.
> #6. Hack-free web app Big claim.
>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)
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.
2. Forecasting (more like planning): at this moment I have X in my account. I have a big event in about 90 days from now. I want the app to "learn" from my past months transactions(expenses & income), create a spending pattern and give me some scenarios: the optimist, pessimist and the probable one.
Currently I am trying this in excel...but doesn't work as planned. I want the app to be able "think" in advance.
Eg. you set a goal: $3,000 cash in next 3 months. Then the app should do: check what you did in the past 3 months, check last year on this time if you have any insurance to cover (car, house...etc, yearly recurring transactions) and the result should be: well, you can't gather $3,000 because you might spend them on: X, Y, Z. If you eliminate one of them, you reach your goal. Some kind of rudimentary artificial intelligence.
3. thanks for OFX, QFX and QIF.
4. Honestly, I want to build something that matters. I think I can support these yearly costs, even with a donate button (no ads).
5. Everywhere the forecasting/planning feature is a paid one.
6. As I initially said, I am trying to plan it as anonymous as possible: the data will be tied to an oauth userID, nothing more.
YNAB is probably one of the simplest budgeting applications in the market. It's successful because it only does budgeting, has extensive training, has a strong community, and emphasizes fiscal responsibility as a lifestyle. However, it's aim is for people who realize they need a budget, but don't know how to do it.
> 4. Honestly, I want to build something that matters. I think I can support these yearly costs, even with a donate button (no ads).
I think we all do, but if you set out to build "something that matters", you're setting yourself up for massive disappointment. Either define a market and build for them, or build the tool for yourself, and tell others about it. Before you can make $100, you need to make $1.
Your comments about forecasting are interesting. The biggest issue with it is variability. You can develop a plan to make $3000 in 3 months, but then have an unexpected car repair that your car repair fund can't fully cover. However, I don't think that's a strong enough argument to deter you from doing it.
I guess my questions would be how strong are you at budgeting and ML?
I used Mint for a long time, and it never helped in any way. I would go look at the summary once or twice a month, think "ok great, all in order", then eventually stop looking at it at all because there was never anything actionable and thus little point in looking.
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?
Let's be serious, we all have internet connection most of the time. When there's no connection, there could be a mobile app (long wait till there).
And no, I don't want the app to pay your bills. You just add: $50, internet bill (attach the pdf/picture or pick one from drive/dropbox) and submit. and meanwhile the document will be uploaded to your drive/dropbox.
YNAB's budgeting philosophy discourages importing data from your bank statement because it disconnects the user from the individual transaction that take place. They ended up adding support for CSV/OFX/QIF because people wanted it.
> As I said in the post, I don't want to operate with personal/sensitive informations.
All financial data is personal and sensitive, whether imported or manually entered.
> Let's be serious, we all have internet connection most of the time.
Most of the time, not all of the time. Especially not in rural areas. I regard my personal finances as pretty important, so not being able to access my budget because I don't have an internet connection is a big problem.
> And no, I don't want the app to pay your bills.
Apologies I didn't phrase that right. I meant: What if I forget to pay my internet bill, then can't access my personal finance app to see if I can afford to pay my internet bill?
There's a lot you can do frontend and keep your backend simple/stupid. If you host the data in Google Drive or Dropbox, you wouldn't be responsible at all for the potentially sensitive information.
If what you're building is something you'd use then it's probably something others would use.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
6. Accident-proof car!
7. Features like?
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.
2. pics will come with a landing page
3. If you have better things to do, than personal finance or planning, you don't need this service
4. documents = bills. I add an entry: electric bill - 100$, but the interface where I pay it keeps only my last 6 bills, not everything, so I want them stored automatically somewhere/
5. I don't need your dropbox/google info. You click a login button, redirect to oauth interface, login on the oauth server then come back to me with a token.
It's not shooting down, it's reality, it's the reason I posted this.
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.
> Ledger never creates or modifies your data. [...] no automated tool will ever change that data.
Therefore, Ledger is always stale, and only useful for obsessive stamp-collectors.
1. It's not anonymous. The ledger is enough to identify someone.
2. It's not 100% better than my current spreadsheet (one tab a month for the coming 6 months).
3. There's no motivation not to close it after a month I.e. no contract
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!
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.
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).
Also checkout: https://www.everydollar.com/
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.
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
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).
Also, the easiest way to monetize is for it to be paid. You did hard work; why shouldn't you be paid for it?
