Comments on: Idea #2: Budget Buddy

By: Donnie Hale

Donnie Hale — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:37:40 +0000

When you consider all the features people are mentioning for “Budget Buddy”, you’ve got Quicken (not to be confused with “Quickbooks”). I’ve used Quicken for 12+ years, and it does all the things you say. I spend about $60 every other year to upgrade (skipping one upgrade in the process). Not sure what’s new here with Quicken and Money so prevalent, plus all their existing relationships with financial institutions (not to mention Checkfree).

One thing you should know about Quicken is that, despite all its bells-and-whistle, the basics of its checkbook management functionality is ***dirt simple***. And given that I can download all my transactions from my bank and use it to pay ally my bills online (for free), my data entry goes almost to zero (mostly just picking the right category for an entry and occasionally splitting an entry across categories). ***Everything*** else is entered for me via the online access mechanisms.

By: Max Ischenko

Max Ischenko — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:24:34 +0000

I’m using a product of one of your potential competitors called AceMoney. It is basically that simple, I’d say too simple for my taste. JFYI.

P.S.: I really like the brainstorming process you’re transcribing online and wish you luck to settle on a worthwhile idea after all.

By: NZ

NZ — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:08:43 +0000

benji Says:
“Yikes. I had no idea it was so inexpensive.”

:) Actually, I didn’t know myself until I read your post and went to check it out.

Anyhow, didn’t mean to ridicule your idea. In fact I really like your approach (this whole 30 idea thing). Just trying to help in brainstorming.

By: benji

benji — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:53:12 +0000

NZ Says:
“Money 2006 Standard is less than $30.”

Yikes. I had no idea it was so inexpensive.

That’s an important factoid for me to keep in mind as I weigh the advantages and disadvantages of all 30 ideas.

Thanks for the tip.

By: Nicolae Namolovan

Nicolae Namolovan — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 05:44:15 +0000

I think you can combine the desktop application with web application, in version 2 of the desktop application you can add smth. like synchronize with web application..

By: NZ

NZ — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 05:35:50 +0000

I like it.

But, Money 2006 Standard is less than $30. I know you said you didn’t want balance sheet or 401k, but you could just not use those features of it. So how would your product appeal to someone looking for money software? Why would a potential customer choose you instead of the mighty MS?

By: Jen

Jen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 18:41:20 +0000

I am glad I found your site so early in the idea project- I can’t wait to see the rest! I agree with Ali on the cell/PDA app perspective (although I know it may diverge from what you listed as a target market). If the program is light and straightforward, I would love to have it on my Blackberry – basically as a replacement to the old check register.

By: benji

benji — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:08:43 +0000

Ali Khan Says:
“What about deployment model of application?”

You’d use a web application? For your personal financial data?

I wouldn’t.

I probably wouldn’t be willing to use a web app as an accounting application unless it was hosted by a big company that I trust (either an actual bank, or Intuit, who makes Quicken and QuickBooks). I certainly wouldn’t be willing to host my data online if I knew the company was a tiny one-man-show company.

And besides, this application doesn’t fulfill any of the necessary qualifications to be a webapp that I talked about a few days ago. So, no, it would certainly not be deployed as a web application.

By: Vladimir Dyuzhev

Vladimir Dyuzhev — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:24:52 +0000

One more con: as an end-user app, it’ll need a decent support. Support will either eat your time or money, so you’ll need more than 240 licenses/week to cover this.

But the potential is huge, I believe. I myself use Excel to do this kind of simple “where did I spent my last paycheck?” thing, and Excel is not a convenient way. The price I’m ready to pay, you’re right, is 20 to 30 dollars.

Regarding distribution channels: you may think of pushing boxes onto retail or partnering with banks which online banking you’ll support initially. Hard to impossible, but — who knows? Quicken was small once too…

P.S. Your “Submit Commont” button doesn’t work in Firefox. :(((

By: Shane

Shane — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 13:35:22 +0000

I think AdWords would work great for this type of product. I can see adwords driving 3,000 clicks a week. Doing some fuzzy math, at $.50 a click, that would cost $750. If 10% buy, that’s $234,000 after google’s paid.

I think it could work.