Would this help?

[jwalker]

I am a software developer who has been following the 9 Steps from "Your money or Your Life" for several years. In that time I have not found any software truly satisfactory for helping with the steps. I've also been interested in starting my own software business for a long time. So I thought, why not try to create my own software.

It would be a big help if you could answer the questions below. Your answers will help me decide if this is worth trying.

The software would be online like Quicken Online, but it would be focused only on:

• Tracking every penny you earn and spend - very much like other personal finance software
• Computing your Real Hourly Wage - would allow marking expenses as work expenses and entering work time
• Producing a Monthly Tabulation - automatically created and displayed in both dollars and hours of life energy
• Answering the three Questions - this would replace the budget component of traditional personal finance software
• Creating a Wall Chart - graphed in the program and printable, would try to project the crossover point for you
• Being Simple, Easy and Focused - it wouldn't have the 100 features you never use in the other personal finance software. It would be focused only on the 9 Steps not on other approaches to managing ones money

Questions?

1. Would you buy software like that? Why or why not?
2. How much would you be willing to pay? Per month? Per Year?
3. Is there another software tool you would want too/instead? Another feature it needs?

Again, your responses will help determine if I do this. So if you want to see this software created please reply even if you only have time for a short answer.

Thanks so much,
Jeff

[SteveinMN]

Jeff, welcome to the forum!

Would you buy software like that? Why or why not?

For where I am in life right now, probably not. First, much of our spending is either fixed (mortgage, IRA contribution) or budgeted (groceries, utility bills). While circumstances always can change, for the foreseeable future we are pretty much on autopilot. There certainly is value to tracking spending against budget. But I see little value for us in computing and printing (!) a report on our "real hourly wage". So much of our spending cannot quite be evaluated that way. Second, I (retired software performance engineer) have reservations about storing confidential financial data in just anybody's "cloud", both from a perspective of how safe it is from unauthorized access and given how much is riding on the continued success of that given cloud service provider for access.

How much would you be willing to pay? Per month? Per Year?

Before we moved to having an accountant do our income taxes, I had no problem paying $30-40 a year for updated tax software. I pay a sync-services provider $20 a year to keep all my calendars and contacts in sync. Our current budgeting software cost around $30, though many of its competitors cost up to $50 -- though that is a one-time cost. So -- assuming I was much younger and wanted such software -- I'd say it would have to come in under $30-40 a year before I would consider it, and probably closer to the $30.

Is there another software tool you would want too/instead? Another feature it needs?

I admire focus in software products. However, I'm curious as to which of the "100 features" you would deem unnecessary that others would call must-haves. I would say two absolutely necessary features are the ability to bring in records from my bank/credit union/brokerage and the ability to import/export a clean QIF/QFX or XML file. Most people would be coming to your service from someplace else, so they likely would have records to move over; and I am very careful about (that is, I don't do it) moving my data into apps from which I cannot extract it accurately later.

Good luck!

[razz]

I may be an exception since I know and manage my 4 bills each month and am retired. Having said that, do you have some friends to run it by who may be your peer in age, experience, interest etc., to see how many are using the YMOYL approach?
I do think that the idea has merit but I wonder who your target market might turn out to be.

[fidgiegirl]

I am pretty established in my program, but jonesing for another. I would be interested as it is hard to get the others to "fit" the nine steps. As far as paying for a program, I get a little queasy to pay more than about $30 unless there is a trial period.

[ToomuchStuff]

I would think the features you want to add, could be done in the program I use (open source): Gnucash.

[jwalker]

I see little value for us in computing and printing (!) a report on our "real hourly wage". [...] Second, I (retired software performance engineer) have reservations about storing confidential financial data in just anybody's "cloud", both from a perspective of how safe it is from unauthorized access and given how much is riding on the continued success of that given cloud service provider for access.

The printing was for the wall chart which is meant to show your progress toward Financial Independence. The book emphasizes the importance of posting it someplace visible as an encouragement. Hence the need to print it. That chart doesn't make use of real hourly wage. I partial share your concerns about security and data access for cloud services. I think those are mitigated by minimizing private data stored (i.e. no account numbers etc. only transactions) and providing full data export capabilities.

I admire focus in software products. However, I'm curious as to which of the "100 features" you would deem unnecessary that others would call must-haves. I would say two absolutely necessary features are the ability to bring in records from my bank/credit union/brokerage and the ability to import/export a clean QIF/QFX or XML file. Most people would be coming to your service from someplace else, so they likely would have records to move over; and I am very careful about (that is, I don't do it) moving my data into apps from which I cannot extract it accurately later.

I agree, import and export are important features. When I refer to many unnecessary features, I am thinking of Quicken which I currently unhappily use. Features it has I don't find useful include:

• 34 reports, only 2 of which are useful
• 14 Graphs, only 2 of which are useful, none of which show what I really want to see
• Traditional budget creation and tracking (replaced by Monthly Tabulation and Three Questions)
• A bunch of customization features that still don't let me do what I want
• Bill Calendar and Projected account balances
• Retirement Planner that isn't flexible enough (can't do multiple what ifs at same time)
• Pointless Tax Center
• Ability to constantly update balance of stock portfolio (I think this encourages focus on short term capital gains)
• Property & Debt section geared toward net worth instead of cashflow and financial independence
• Unneeded settings on accounts (i.e. what the interest rate of my credit card is)
• Alerts Center
• Address Book
• Loan Calculator
• Ability to schedule when the app will update (really?)
• Password Vault
• Quicken Bill Pay
• Check writing
• Ability to switch which way the menus are organized?

That is just in Quicken Deluxe. I used to have another edition because my ex-wife needed to track home business expenses and it had even more unnecessary features.

[...] do you have some friends to run it by who may be your peer in age, experience, interest etc., to see how many are using the YMOYL approach?

Unfortunately, I don't personally know anyone else that follows the YMOYL approach to money management.

I am pretty established in my program, but jonesing for another. I would be interested as it is hard to get the others to "fit" the nine steps. As far as paying for a program, I get a little queasy to pay more than about $30 unless there is a trial period.

There would certainly be a trail period. To be clear, are you meaning a one time $30? or can that be recurring yearly? What program do you use now?

I would think the features you want to add, could be done in the program I use (open source): Gnucash.

It might be possible to add it. Although, I think focus on a single approach is valuable in a piece of software. Also, many reviewers say Gnucash is difficult to use. Finally, I just don't have the time to invest in implementing that in an open source program where I won't be getting any monetary reward.

Thanks Everyone for your feedback.

If anyone else reads this, I would appreciate your input. Thanks!

[Kestra]

• Tracking every penny you earn and spend - very much like other personal finance software
• Computing your Real Hourly Wage - would allow marking expenses as work expenses and entering work time
• Producing a Monthly Tabulation - automatically created and displayed in both dollars and hours of life energy
• Answering the three Questions - this would replace the budget component of traditional personal finance software
• Creating a Wall Chart - graphed in the program and printable, would try to project the crossover point for you
• Being Simple, Easy and Focused - it wouldn't have the 100 features you never use in the other personal finance software. It would be focused only on the 9 Steps not on other approaches to managing ones money

Questions?

1. Would you buy software like that? Why or why not?
2. How much would you be willing to pay? Per month? Per Year?
3. Is there another software tool you would want too/instead? Another feature it needs?

Again, your responses will help determine if I do this. So if you want to see this software created please reply even if you only have time for a short answer.

Thanks so much,
Jeff

I love that kind of stuff, but I prefer to set up my own - that's part of the fun. I wouldn't like to use a program that has it all done for me. I like manipulating my own data in various ways.
Regarding what you propose:
Tracking every penny - I do that manually in Excel.
RHW - like Steve, I don't find that useful at this point in my life. I'm not comparing two jobs and I have a rough idea of my RHW in my head anyhow.
Tabulation - I do all sorts of monthly reporting in Excel. Life energy is more in my head.
3 Questions - I don't write these down. I just try to think about each purchase.
Wall Chart - I do this in Excel. I have no need to print it out.

I don't want to discourage anyone's motivation or ideas, but for myself I probably wouldn't buy such software.
I think YMOYL is a hard crowd. It seems directed towards people who don't mind doing some charts and number crunching. I'm not sure that the lack of software is what prevents some people from getting with the program. Some people just don't like things laid out in a mathematical way. That being said, there are millions of people in the world of all types. What would be great, is if you could find someone who isn't into YMOYL and see if using your software changes their mind.

[SteveinMN]

Thanks for the follow-up, Jeff. The additional information was good -- though it does not change my mind about wanting this product.

I agree that Quicken has become a morass of code. There's no reason it has to duplicate OS services with things like an address book, a Bill Calendar (why not just an .ics that one could add to whatever is already being used for a calendar?), and so on. I don't think I've owned a copy of Quicken for about 10 years, so I have missed how muddled it's become.

But more to your original post, I think Kestra makes an excellent point -- if there were some way to package/position this software as an introduction to YMOYL, that might serve as the proverbial camel's nose in the tent. Perhaps one key objective would be to aim at the mobile market, as more people turn to tablets and smartphones. I don't know if software like this already exists in the Apple App or Google Play stores.

[RoseFI]

Jeff, yours is an exciting post, and it's GREAT to hear from you/have you join this community! That said, this may be the wrong crowd to ask re: purchasing/user fees. These are mainly the uber-frugals who have already implemented the program on their own. I know many old-schoolers who still do it all on paper! (Crazy, I know, but at least they're ready for the apocalypse.)

HOWEVER I will say that NRM has felt that this would be a GREAT tool for folks who are new to the program, especially GenX and youngers. You are right -- there's nothing out there that enables people to really do the program in the aspects that make it most radically effective (not that I've found anyway - most things force people to budget.) So many people default to other programs and then drift away from the Nine Steps, with resulting lessening of truly transforming their relationship with money.

NRM pursued the idea back when we were creating the new Financial Integrity Program materials, but the possible development partner gave a quote that would have made the program prohibitively expensive. NRM has plans to do a survey next month re: possible new products, and a board meeting in October to discuss results, so you'll probably want to get in on that. Tom will be contacting you to see if you'd like to really pursue this and if it might be more economically feasible at this time - or feel free to email him at info@financialintegrity.org to further the conversation asap.

[ToomuchStuff]

If I were targeting GenX and younger, I would NOT be targeting a computer market as it is dying. I would be targeting the cell phone market and "apps". (I realize they are a computer, but the way the younger ones I know, handle them, several do NOT use any other computer, unless they have to for school or such).