Building a personal finance app

[nzrnrdn]

Hey guys, first of all happy Deepavali to everyone who's celebrating!

I'm building a personal finance app that combines personal finance (budgeting/expenses) with investing. Any insights or feedback would be much appreciated!

This app aims to helps you do 3 things:

Budgeting: when you link your bank account/s to our app, you'll get a comprehensive overview of your financial health, as well as some really interesting statistics, such as how you compare to other users around your demographic

Saving: we're implementing round-ups to help you save. For example, if you buy a cup of coffee for $5.50, we will round it up to $6.00 and that difference of $0.50 will be saved (or invested) for you.

Investing: with those rounded-up savings, we will automatically put it into investment portfolios of your choice. We will be offering portfolios from local and international robo-advisors. We're also offering goal-based social investing where you can save/invest for certain group activities, such as vacations or even a BTO for couples.

Would appreciate any feedback, as well as things/features you'd like to see on a personal finance app. Thanks!

edit: I also shared more about on Facebook:

 

[dappermen]

must be able to
-compare few stks/etf or UT/funds & indices all on a same chart

-auto-add in dividends rec'd mthly /quarterly or yrly thru a calendrg sys (divs r part of total returns too)

- set auto-alarm/alert to remind u it is earngs report or ex-div date etc

- simulated performce of a stk or PF 4 next period?

 

[pchan2018]

--budgetting app

I have a budgeting XLS file that i have been using for years now (not sure where i got it the first time) however cant find any other budgeting application that can compete with it. Most are too basic that i cant customise it in my need. some suggestions:

1) Rather than connecting to banks (which will not be possible probably with the number of banks available), have a way to read and parse the SMS that these banks are sending the mobile phone of the user. Given that most banks are now actually have this capability and certain numbers that you can search in their message folder and parse through.

2) For credit card transactions, have the ability to put where the source of fund for that particular transaction. Not sure of other folks, but normally i have some buckets where i get my funds for my CC transactions. Like Family fund (via our salaries), Educational fund (for those tuition fee and other school related expenses of the kids, including taxi fares), housing fund (for any house related expenses), etc. And incorporate this to your budget app. This might be tricky.

3) there should also be a way to track some expenses and tag them as something to do every month manually, or auto allocated already to our accounts. At least the user will not forget the manual tasks they need to do. Manual like, giving salary to your maid, DCA'ing into my investment accounts. Auto like having standing transfer instructions to transfer $x to this account and so on. For my case, i have one bank account that i just put every cent that i got from my salary on it, from there funds get auto transferred to my kids educ fund, housing fund, pay taxes, and any giro related deductions. the rest of the funds stay in the said account until the expenses related for them comes (i.e. annual insurance premiums and other time bound fees).

4) Have the ability to do the budget allocation per week/month/quarter/year and can have a template that i can use in any budget window i want.. Meaning, if per month, you should have a template that can be copied on every month and adjust it accordingly.

5) Have the ability to export the weeks/months/year budget details to an xls file, that can be viewed in a PC or import it back to your app.

6) last but not the least, have those fancy charts of where i have been spending my monies depending on my budget window chosen. If you can also do that in the CC transaction, i've been looking for that kind of app as well.

-- investing

all dappermen mentioned above plus..

not sure if you want to compete with these new thing the banks are doing by getting a view of all of your accounts from CPF to banks. Like the NAVPlanner of DBS. One think i dont like about it is its a bit dumb.


Like its trying to lump every cash deposit account that you have in emergency funds.
I cant also make any modifications on the investment values that i already entered it in the past. Like if i bought zz amount of XYZ stock and sold only half of it after 6 mos. I cant get it to update, specially for those held by my broker and not cdp.


--savings

1) Have the ability to do some forecasting or tracking if we are meeting our saving goals.
2) i would assume this is an offline tracking of our saving accounts and may not be connected to the bank. So have the ability to track our deposit and withdrawals so that we can just use this app to check our balances without logging into our bank accounts.
3) to tie up to the budgeting application, have the ability to track our expenses based on the allocation that we put in our budgeting app. That is, if i allotted say $1K for my monthly expenses, i should be able to track say on the 18th day of the month, how much more do i have based on my $1K budget.

 

[wira]

Hey guys, first of all happy Diwali to everyone who's celebrating!

I'm building a personal finance app that combines personal finance (budgeting/expenses) with investing. Any insights or feedback would be much appreciated!

This app aims to helps you do 3 things:

Budgeting: when you link your bank account/s to our app, you'll get a comprehensive overview of your financial health, as well as some really interesting statistics, such as how you compare to other users around your demographic

Saving: we're implementing round-ups to help you save. For example, if you buy a cup of coffee for $5.50, we will round it up to $6.00 and that difference of $0.50 will be saved (or invested) for you.

Investing: with those rounded-up savings, we will automatically put it into investment portfolios of your choice. We will be offering portfolios from local and international robo-advisors. We're also offering goal-based social investing where you can save/invest for certain group activities, such as vacations or even a BTO for couples.

Would appreciate any feedback, as well as things/features you'd like to see on a personal finance app. Thanks!

note that this is something similar that Hugo app is already doing
https://www.hugosave.com/

 

[celtosaxon]

There are lots of great apps in the US doing stuff like this. Probably the most famous one being Personal Capital. Also, there is a relatively new broker on the scene called M1Finance, it is becoming popular because of their innovative UI and insightful analytics.

 

[Shiny Things]

Hey guys, first of all happy Diwali to everyone who's celebrating!

I'm building a personal finance app that combines personal finance (budgeting/expenses) with investing. Any insights or feedback would be much appreciated!

This app aims to helps you do 3 things:

Budgeting: when you link your bank account/s to our app, you'll get a comprehensive overview of your financial health, as well as some really interesting statistics, such as how you compare to other users around your demographic

Saving: we're implementing round-ups to help you save. For example, if you buy a cup of coffee for $5.50, we will round it up to $6.00 and that difference of $0.50 will be saved (or invested) for you.

Investing: with those rounded-up savings, we will automatically put it into investment portfolios of your choice. We will be offering portfolios from local and international robo-advisors. We're also offering goal-based social investing where you can save/invest for certain group activities, such as vacations or even a BTO for couples.

Would appreciate any feedback, as well as things/features you'd like to see on a personal finance app. Thanks!

Putting my PM hat on here—I love the idea, but it sounds like you're trying to do a lot in one app. You're doing Mint, plus Acorns, plus a few other things as well, plus I think you're going to have to wedge payments in there somewhere to make the round-up function work?

You might be better off focusing on just one of those three feature sets, or maybe even a sub-part of one of those three feature sets for an MVP. Maybe just the "compare your budget to your demographic" feature, or just the "goal-based social investing" feature; get that nailed first, and then scale from there, rather than trying to "boil the ocean".

 

[nzrnrdn]

Putting my PM hat on here—I love the idea, but it sounds like you're trying to do a lot in one app. You're doing Mint, plus Acorns, plus a few other things as well, plus I think you're going to have to wedge payments in there somewhere to make the round-up function work?

You might be better off focusing on just one of those three feature sets, or maybe even a sub-part of one of those three feature sets for an MVP. Maybe just the "compare your budget to your demographic" feature, or just the "goal-based social investing" feature; get that nailed first, and then scale from there, rather than trying to "boil the ocean".

Appreaciate the feedback, you're definitely right about that. We're actually building the personal finance (budgeting/expenses) part of the build and launching that first. We're in the midst of acquiring our license from MAS before we can launch the investments.

You're right about us trying to do a lot in one app, but we're in an accelarator program and VCs won't back us if it's too simple, which explains the ambition. One VC came back to us and told us that we needed to be crazier with our idea by incorporating crypto, blockchain and all that stuff. I mean, we'd definitely love to add those features, but that's for the future.

Thanks for the input!

 

[nzrnrdn]

must be able to
-compare few stks/etf or UT/funds & indices all on a same chart

-auto-add in dividends rec'd mthly /quarterly or yrly thru a calendrg sys (divs r part of total returns too)

- set auto-alarm/alert to remind u it is earngs report or ex-div date etc

- simulated performce of a stk or PF 4 next period?

Damn bro, that's a whole ass investment app on its own

 

[nzrnrdn]

There are lots of great apps in the US doing stuff like this. Probably the most famous one being Personal Capital. Also, there is a relatively new broker on the scene called M1Finance, it is becoming popular because of their innovative UI and insightful analytics.

M1Finance would be the dream goal, tbh. Can you imagine, a finance super app? It's crazy what they're doing and I'm pretty sure it's benefiting a lot of their users!

 

[dappermen]

Damn bro, that's a whole ass investment app on its own

so that u can beat ur competitors, i will never get 1 new app without any goodies in it (that the rest do not seemed to hve)

most imptly must be FOC! Hopefully

All the best on your VC journey!!!!!!!

there r many apps in the mkt, but i dont think they offer some of the pointers proposed:

must be able to
-compare few stks/etf or UT/funds & indices all on a same chart

-auto-add in dividends rec'd mthly /quarterly or yrly thru a calendrg sys (divs r part of total returns too)

- set auto-alarm/alert to remind u it is earngs report or ex-div date etc

- simulated performce of a stk or PF 4 next period?

 

[reddevil0728]

M1Finance would be the dream goal, tbh. Can you imagine, a finance super app? It's crazy what they're doing and I'm pretty sure it's benefiting a lot of their users!

what are you planning to do? monetise?

 

[faded11]

Is there an app similar to Mint that we can download and use?

Mint is still not available for download outside of US

 

[nzrnrdn]

what are you planning to do? monetise?

We're only monetising after we launch our investment platform after we get our license from MAS. Basically, we are onboarding multiple local and international robo-advisors. So just like the robo-advisors, we will be monetising through AUM fees and we'll have the ability to offer lower fees to our users compared to going directly to a robo-advisor.

I shared more about it on Facebook!

 

[nzrnrdn]

--budgetting app

I have a budgeting XLS file that i have been using for years now (not sure where i got it the first time) however cant find any other budgeting application that can compete with it. Most are too basic that i cant customise it in my need. some suggestions:

1) Rather than connecting to banks (which will not be possible probably with the number of banks available), have a way to read and parse the SMS that these banks are sending the mobile phone of the user. Given that most banks are now actually have this capability and certain numbers that you can search in their message folder and parse through.

2) For credit card transactions, have the ability to put where the source of fund for that particular transaction. Not sure of other folks, but normally i have some buckets where i get my funds for my CC transactions. Like Family fund (via our salaries), Educational fund (for those tuition fee and other school related expenses of the kids, including taxi fares), housing fund (for any house related expenses), etc. And incorporate this to your budget app. This might be tricky.

3) there should also be a way to track some expenses and tag them as something to do every month manually, or auto allocated already to our accounts. At least the user will not forget the manual tasks they need to do. Manual like, giving salary to your maid, DCA'ing into my investment accounts. Auto like having standing transfer instructions to transfer $x to this account and so on. For my case, i have one bank account that i just put every cent that i got from my salary on it, from there funds get auto transferred to my kids educ fund, housing fund, pay taxes, and any giro related deductions. the rest of the funds stay in the said account until the expenses related for them comes (i.e. annual insurance premiums and other time bound fees).

4) Have the ability to do the budget allocation per week/month/quarter/year and can have a template that i can use in any budget window i want.. Meaning, if per month, you should have a template that can be copied on every month and adjust it accordingly.

5) Have the ability to export the weeks/months/year budget details to an xls file, that can be viewed in a PC or import it back to your app.

6) last but not the least, have those fancy charts of where i have been spending my monies depending on my budget window chosen. If you can also do that in the CC transaction, i've been looking for that kind of app as well.

-- investing

all dappermen mentioned above plus..

not sure if you want to compete with these new thing the banks are doing by getting a view of all of your accounts from CPF to banks. Like the NAVPlanner of DBS. One think i dont like about it is its a bit dumb.


--savings

1) Have the ability to do some forecasting or tracking if we are meeting our saving goals.
2) i would assume this is an offline tracking of our saving accounts and may not be connected to the bank. So have the ability to track our deposit and withdrawals so that we can just use this app to check our balances without logging into our bank accounts.
3) to tie up to the budgeting application, have the ability to track our expenses based on the allocation that we put in our budgeting app. That is, if i allotted say $1K for my monthly expenses, i should be able to track say on the 18th day of the month, how much more do i have based on my $1 budget.



Like its trying to lump every cash deposit account that you have in emergency funds.
I cant also make any modifications on the investment values that i already entered it in the past. Like if i bought zz amount of XYZ stock and sold only half of it after 6 mos. I cant get it to update, specially for those held by my broker and not cdp.

Appreciate the long write up, a lot of valid and interesting points you brought up especially point number 3 with regards to budgeting. Super exciting features, and we'll definitely look to implement them over the course of our journey. Thanks!

 

[celtosaxon]

Today I can view all of my financial information in one spot today. I do this with the Google Sheets app. Share prices, gold prices and exchange rates all get pulled in with formulas. I can see my exposures by geography, market cap size and sector (I have to add in the percentages for each ETF myself, then it calculates). There are a few things I need to update manually, like cash balances, CPF balance, home equity (marked to market), but not frequently.

I can see my equity allocation as a % of my net investable assets in there, it calculates how much to add or reduce to hit my upper and lower bands, which are 120 minus my age and 110 minus my age. In between those, I also display where I am currently in terms of XXX minus my age.

The nice thing about all of this, I can customize it however I want. Recently, in addition to my net investable assets and my total net worth, I created a new measure called “total financial worth” that includes the value of other benefits that I’m eligible to receive in the future that don’t show up on my balance sheet, as that plays into my allocation.

That is how I manage my finances today, but I am probably not your typical financial consumer. I also enjoy managing my finances, so I don’t feel any real need for automation like target date funds… but that is me.

 

[Perisher]

Many apps fail at simplicity.
If you can come up with an app that one can choose and add/remove what to keep track and calculate, you can possibly have an edge vs the myriad of apps out there.

On the other hand, it’s Deepavali, not Diwali. Know your target audience. Different country different culture. Your starting statement already offended some.

Also, don’t keep linking to your fb, that’s advertising. Just saying.

 

[nzrnrdn]

Many apps fail at simplicity.
If you can come up with an app that one can choose and add/remove what to keep track and calculate, you can possibly have an edge vs the myriad of apps out there.

On the other hand, it’s Deepavali, not Diwali. Know your target audience. Different country different culture. Your starting statement already offended some.

Also, don’t keep linking to your fb, that’s advertising. Just saying.

Damn, my bad bro. Edited + noted. Not my intention to advertise but you got it, it ends there!

 

[Shiny Things]

Appreaciate the feedback, you're definitely right about that. We're actually building the personal finance (budgeting/expenses) part of the build and launching that first. We're in the midst of acquiring our license from MAS before we can launch the investments.

Good stuff. This feels like the right approach.

You're right about us trying to do a lot in one app, but we're in an accelarator program and VCs won't back us if it's too simple, which explains the ambition. One VC came back to us and told us that we needed to be crazier with our idea by incorporating crypto, blockchain and all that stuff. I mean, we'd definitely love to add those features, but that's for the future.

Good lord, this, though. At the risk of being super controversial: if I were in your shoes, or if I was an advisor, I'd be telling you to find better investors. "We won't back your idea if it's too simple" is atrocious advice for a resource-constrained startup. They're trying to make you drop dead from burnout.

 

[celtosaxon]

I was asked in a PM about sharing my Google Sheets template. Just sharing here my response here in case it can benefit others:

It would be hard for anyone to make sense of my sheet, honestly. Heavily customized to my specific needs and has a lot of hard coded logic that would not convert to another portfolio. There are also several manual inputs, even within the formulas (just because I’m lazy) that only I would know or understand.

My suggestion would be to start your own Google sheet. First, enter all of the symbols of the stocks/ETFs you own in the first column. Pull in the current prices in the next column using formulas:

LSE security in A1 —

=googlefinance("lon:"&A1,"price")

SGX security in A2 —

=index(ImportXML("https://sgx.i3investor.com/servlets/stk/"&A2&".jsp", "//td[contains(@class, 'big16')]"), 1, 1)

HKEX or US security in A3 —

=googlefinance(A3)

If you want to add trend lines in the cells next to your stocks, you can use this formula (I use a 15 day trend, but you can use whatever you like):

=sparkline(googlefinance(A1,"price",today()-15,today()))

In another column would have the number of shares you own. And another column multiplying for the total current value.

In another column you will probably want to convert everything into SGD.

To pull in SGD exchange rate —

=googlefinance("currency:USDSGD")

You can also pull in gold price, if needed:

=Index(ImportHTML("http://www.apmex.com/spotprices/gold-prices","table",9),2,2)

For each ETF you own, go and get the % allocations by geography, sector and company size. Then you can break down what you own by multiplying the percent by the amount you have invested.

To calculate your current age in years, use the following, replace yyyy,mm,dd with your birthdate:

=(now()-date(yyyy,mm,dd))/365

Once you have that you can divide it by 100 to make it a % and compare with your equity allocation.

That will already get you 80% of what I’ve got in my sheet. I don’t track profit/loss in the sheet, I prefer to use the Yahoo Finance app for that - it’s just easier.

One suggestion, to get a more compact view, divide all totals by 1000. Remember, this is for managing your portfolio at a high level, anything less than $1k just doesn’t matter. It also provides a little more privacy to any prying eyes.

 

[nzrnrdn]

Good stuff. This feels like the right approach.


Good lord, this, though. At the risk of being super controversial: if I were in your shoes, or if I was an advisor, I'd be telling you to find better investors. "We won't back your idea if it's too simple" is atrocious advice for a resource-constrained startup. They're trying to make you drop dead from burnout.

I would agree it's controversial, but considering they were backers of Carro and Carousell, who are both billion dollar companies, they probably know what they're saying. And I agree with them, it really is a simple solution to a problem. With blockchain and web3 making moves, that really is the future for startups. Also, it's not like we're going to implement these features from the get-go but we should be trying to incorporate some of these aspects in the future. Thanks!