Knudge.Me

So I'm getting married this year. October. Paying for a wedding is expensive, but we're managing somehow.

While that price tag of our wedding makes me anxious, the thought of having a child anytime soon makes me even more so.

Click here to enlarge (courtesy of Visual.ly):

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What really makes me worried is the priorities part. As a soon to be 29-year old male, I spend most of money on experiential things: learning, trips, eating, going out. And as I mentioned prior, before returning to school, I was able to manage my money decently well (meaning, I actually had money to spend).

In short, having to think about how my spending habits affects other people is not something I really ever thought about - ask my fiance, she'll tell you I suck at it (getting better, but I still suck).

And I think that's something that's missing from the financial education conversation. It's pretty powerful stuff once you sit down and think about it. Granted, many of you may already know all this, and I may be late to the game, but still...

How do you teach this? Is it maturity?

My apologies again for the lack of updates recently. In case you didn't see my tweet earlier, my life's been a bit nuts. Calming down though. 

On another note...

Seriously - if you haven't done your taxes yet you have um... 26 days left to do so.  At least get organized. That's step one. Takes longer than you think. Don't underestimate tax form finding and gathering. It'll get you.

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I'm in a bit of a financial rut right now. Life happens. Unfortunately some of that happening is a bit expensive. Last weekend I attended a bachelor party (those are always expensive), had to buy a suit for an interview that popped up - it was like a real life random battle, and for the next few weeks have weddings to attend. 

Argh.

What this means is I'm trying avoiding doing things that cost money. Or better yet... finding things to do that don't cost much money at all.  Here's my tentative mixed list:

Watching Aziz Ansari's new comedy special

Running - Note: I think running is one of the stupidest things ever. It's the only activity... well, one of two that I can think of... where the better you get at it, the longer it takes to do

Work

Maybe get caught up in school

Learn some more coding

Follow the Tim Tebow saga

Sit

This list makes me sad. My life is not very exciting...

Anyone else got any other ideas?

Those that have been reading this blog for a while know that I always bring up the fact that 50% of all American adults are financially illiterate.

For a recap, that means that every other person can't answer the following questions correctly:

You have $100 in a savings account that earns 2% interest per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?

** more than $102

** exactly $102

** than $102

Imagine the interest rate on your savings account was 1% per year and inflation was 2% per year. After 1 year, would you be able to buy more than, exactly the same as, or less than today with the money in this account?

Our highest priority here at KnudgeMe is to help you understand how you spend money, so that you can better save money, but part of doing that means teaching these savings concepts at the same time.

Beta sign up close in 3 minutes.

I saw a post come through the KnudgeMe Twitter feed this morning entitled Ten Things We Hate Spending Our Hard Earned Money On.  While I don't necessarily agree with the list - I actually don't mind paying money for the dentist, but I do mind paying money to see the doctor for all of 2 minutes though - it got me thinking.

What do I really hate spending money on?

Cable TV.

I just don't understand why the thing is so expensive. Other than sports, I very rarely watch anything that's being shown currently on TV, and thus cannot justify paying for the cable company's services. Hulu, Netflix, and iTunes; those all take care of my TV watching needs, and combined, they cost less than my cable bill. It's ridiculous.

If you're trying to do the Math:

Hulu: free

Netflix: split the cost w/ my brother, and we only have streaming

iTunes: very rarely do I use this

Amazon: very rarely do I use this

Typical grand total spent per month on viewing things: ~ $4. 

My fiance, and current roommate (not the same people), however love TV, and thus I split a cable bill every month - I'm a fair person. As soon as there's a service that streams channels a la carte (I know someone was working on one), they will have my money. Mos Def. 

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Last reminder to sign up for the KnudgeMe Beta. Closing all sign ups Saturday at 11:59 PM CST.

If you need a recap of reasons:

Click here

And here

And here's the last reason why you should sign up. 

We, Team KnudgeMe, really value your feedback. We want to build a product for YOU, not for us. We can sit here and spend time guessing what feature you might like, but we'd rather hear it directly from you.

America has a savings problem and we care about solving it. However, this can never get done with you.

So apparently RG3 of Baylor fame runs a 4.41 40. That's pretty fast. Maybe not as fast as or amusing as this guy, but that's up for debate.

Now onto the non-youtube stuff.

We'll be closing Alpha/Beta signups at the end of this week. So if you haven't signed up yet, do so now: here.

For those that need a bit more convincing - I'd like to show you our draft mobile flow. Most of it will look pretty similar to what we have on the web. Scroll through to the end though, there's some functionality that makes more sense to have on the mobile app than the web - on initial thought at least.

So without further adieu -

You got your log-in/sign up that's pretty self explanatory.

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So far so good right? Just mimicking the web functionality.

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Now here is where it starts to get interesting. Remember those recommendations we provide? With the mobile app we're thinking it makes sense to provide a way for you to track whether or not you did those recommendations. You know... something like a checkbox.

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And now to show you why we're called KnudgeMe.

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With the mobile app we can send reminders to your phone (non spam and non annoying reminders of course). While this may seem incredibly simple - something we strive for: simplicity - one thing we've heard from talking to potential customers is that people want to be reminded about what they're trying to do. You know, they want to be nudged *wink wink*.

For non mobile app users we're thinking about implementing this same type of functionality via e-mail. That's a little bit more tricky work flow wise, but if it's something you all want, we'll figure it out.

Everything you've seen in our sneak peaks is the foundation for us moving forward. If there's something you'd like to see that we don't have, please feel free to email me (tam [at] knudge [dot]me), leave a comment below, or use that Facebook button somewhere on the right to post on our wall. I promise, I'll respond. 

If you haven't done your taxes yet I suggest doing them soon. It's not hard. Just use TurboTax.com and file for free. Well... file your federal for free at least. State returns cost money (if you have to file them of course. When I was a consultant I had to file 6 different state returns one year. Fun).

The reason you want to file sooner rather than later is pretty simple; time.

If you're getting money back, you want that money in your hand sooner rather than later. We talked about this before, remember? 

If you owe money, you'll actually have time to figure out how to get the funds you need to pay. Correct me if I'm wrong, but regardless of when you file, the due date for when you pay the govt is all the same. Seriously, if someone knows otherwise, please inform me. I'm ok with having a wrong opinion, but I don't like to have wrong facts.  

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Zach's been making some more progress to our service/product. Whoo hoo! I'll be sending out an e-mail to the Beta List sometime this week. If you haven't signed up yet, please do by clicking here or the App link in the navigation. I've decided to close it end of week next week. 

I'll be showing some mockups of our mobile app later this week too. So stay tuned!

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The month of February always scares me. There's way too much candy being passed around, it's freaking cold, and my bills feel like they come way too soon.

I know, I know. You're thinking...

Don't eat the candy then

Put on a sweater

Don't your bills come at the same time every month?!

And my reply to you is

Word

No

And yes. But!

While my bills are still appearing in my inbox/mailbox at the same time, and due at about the same time they normally are, the few days missing from February make them due so much sooner. 

Which means a few days less that I have to cobble up whatever I need to pay my bills on time (which you should ALWAYS do).

Easier said than done. 

That aside, even prior to school when I was working, February always gave me fits. Especially in jobs where I was paid every two weeks as opposed to the 1st and 15th. 

What's the point of this inane rambling?

Timing of money is CRUCIAL. 

If you can control the flow of your money (I should probably show you how to do this at a future time - noted) you have a little bit of leeway when it comes to spending power. 

Anyone else have this same issue with February? If so how do you do deal with it? If not this month, which month gives you financial trouble?

Just for kicks, here's my spending for the month this far (click for a more viewable version):

For those curious: I've spent about $370 so far. About $30 or, 8% of my spending, was spent on food. That tells me two things: I don't pack enough food/snacks when I went to class; maybe I need to stop eating so much.

Thank you to those of you that have signed up to Beta test. Much appreciated. The more I think about it, the more I think it's like an Alpha test. Alphabeta... I wonder if that's where the word alphabet comes from. Hmmm.

So what did you all sign up for? Let me show you...

Sooner or later when you type Knudge.me into your browser you'll be greeted with a screen that looks like this:

Simple splash page that tells you what we do. Nothing fancy. Once you create your log-in we can move along and start building a service focused around you.

  Research shows that we Millenials (anyone born from 1982-2000 or anyone who gets excited to see this [skip to the 1:10 mark and get your mind blown] think about saving in a goal based context: meaning we save for vacations, for an iPad, for a house. We don't save for the sake of saving. Thus, the first thing we ask you is what you're saving for. Even if it's for something as simple as shoes, it's still a goal.

Once we understand what you want to do with your money, we need to see how you're currently spending your money by having you log into your credit cards and banks. 

For those concerned with security I just want to point out two things:

We log you into your accounts through your credit card/bank. The sign in form you see is that of your financial institution.

We only analyze and show data, we have no power to transfer money or take any action of any kind.

Once you click done, some magic happens that I can't speak to. Not yet anyways.

What comes out is something like this...

Recommendations that tell you exactly how much you'll be saving and how much that contributes to your goals; recommendations that you can actually start doing. 

Knowing that we can actually help you better understand their spending behavior/habits, and ultimately help you save money excites us. Again, if this is something you might be interested in, sign up for our Beta which, barring any setbacks, should come out in a month or so. If you have any thoughts/comments/randomness, feel free to email me at:  tam [at] knudge [dot] me. 

Oh... and we'll only be keeping our beta open til we hit a certain number of sign ups. After that, we'll be closing that list. That could take a week or two, we're not sure, but sign up today to make sure you have the option to test.

For those that have checked our Team page you know that KnudgeMe consists of two people: Me and Zach. For those that have read more than one post, you've probably realized that there's only one writing style. Mine.

So what's Zach been doing? 

Building out the most awesome next generation personal finance application of course (please excuse the hyperbole). We combine Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Google Wave all into one app to disrupt every company all at once. Oh, and we add gamification mechanics so that we can also mess with Zynga.

Kidding. I just wanted to use pitch buzzwords/themes that currently annoy me. 

Seriously though.

We're working on building a web and mobile application that tells you HOW to save money. And not just you in a general sense, but you in a personal sense. My recommendations are different than Zach's recommendations, which are different than your recommendations. 

Why?

Because we all live different lives and all have different savings goals. Duh.

Oh... and it teaches you financial concepts at the same time. In plain english. So you can apply what you save with what you learn. Because reading about financial concepts when you don't have any money to do said financial concept is kind of demoralizing. Sad face.

We just want to help people have a better grasp of how they spend their money, so they can better save their money. This is our vision; this is our goal. We believe we can deliver on it, and if this is something that might interest you, please sign up to be a Beta Tester. Even if you're not interested in testing, you can still sign up to get updates as to our progress, we won't cry. 

Zach won't at least.

Click here to sign up OR the App link in the top navigation.