New business idea

MattyT97

Hello. I have a business idea and I am looking to see if it could be a good idea to move forward with.

The business idea I have involves helping individuals and families to budget their money by helping them create their budgets and then by using the what their income and expenses are I create monthly, quarterly, bi-annual and annual reports to show whether or not they are on track with their budget but can also track and compare their income and expenses by each month, quarter, 6 months and year.

Please let me know if you believe this is a good idea.

RacingDriver

I think that there are already a lot of budgeting spreadsheets, apps, etc. available so this is nothing new.

Wyndham

Would you be charging for your services? If so, what value are you adding? Why would someone pay for you to help rather than make use of free resources?

MattyT97

Wyndham said:

Would you be charging for your services? If so, what value are you adding? Why would someone pay for you to help rather than make use of free resources?

Hi Wyndham. I would be charging for the services but it wouldn't be expensive and it would be a fixed monthly fee rather than an hourly fee.

eskbanker

That doesn't answer the question of what value you'd be adding though, to justify paying you rather than using all the free tools and resources - why not try out your 'elevator pitch' on here, i.e. state in no more than a paragraph or two what you'd charge and why someone should pay you that?

MattyT97

eskbanker said:

That doesn't answer the question of what value you'd be adding though, to justify paying you rather than using all the free tools and resources - why not try out your 'elevator pitch' on here, i.e. state in no more than a paragraph or two what you'd charge and why someone should pay you that?

This is just an idea at the moment so I don't have an elevator pitch right now. The this is just some market research to see whether or not there is a market for this service to decide whether I pursue this idea or not.

A fee between £15-£30 per month was my idea but it depends on what people would pay for it.

I'm open to any feedback on what anyone thinks and if there's a market for it I can pursue it and if not I can think about other ideas.

eskbanker

Difficult to research the market on here, because most people visiting these boards have an interest in either or both of personal finance and money saving, so aren't your target demographic, but frankly I'd be amazed if you could really justify £180-360 a year of value, although anyone prepared to fork out that colour of money really does have budgeting issues!

Perhaps worth spending some time researching what's already available for nothing in order to validate if you can add more, including all the tools, etc, at the likes of:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/
https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/budgeting/budget-planner
https://www.stepchange.org/debt-info/how-to-make-a-budget.aspx
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/budgeting/budgeting/work-out-your-budget/

and the plethora of apps mentioned on here (search for 'budgeting apps' threads, etc) and reviewed at the likes of https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jan/09/budgeting-apps-best-money-personal-finance-tools

RogerBareford

MattyT97 said:

eskbanker said:

That doesn't answer the question of what value you'd be adding though, to justify paying you rather than using all the free tools and resources - why not try out your 'elevator pitch' on here, i.e. state in no more than a paragraph or two what you'd charge and why someone should pay you that?

This is just an idea at the moment so I don't have an elevator pitch right now. The this is just some market research to see whether or not there is a market for this service to decide whether I pursue this idea or not.

A fee between £15-£30 per month was my idea but it depends on what people would pay for it.

I'm open to any feedback on what anyone thinks and if there's a market for it I can pursue it and if not I can think about other ideas.

For you to be able to help them budget and track what their income is and all their outgoings are they would need to provide you with all that information. If they get all that information together then they bascially have done most of the work so why would they they pay you £15 to £30 a month just to look at it and do a couple of calculations they could do themselves?

I think anyone who is willing to spend the time getting all the information together can most likely create a budget and track it themselves without having to pay you.

Anyone who isn't willing to spend the time to get the information together then how will you get it?

Zanderman

Personally speaking I'd never pay for such a service, and as already pointed out you are perhaps asking the wrong people as most posters on here already do budgeting themselves or through the many free systems.

Three additional points - firstly the proposed fee, as eskbanker says, is far too much for what the service could be.

Secondly, this concept - you getting people to tell you their spend etc implies a potentially major share of personal and confidential information.  Which would be a big responsibility and would need the reassurance of secure systems.

And thirdly, the effort people would have to go to to give this information, to tell you their income and outgoings in the first place and for you to then be continually updated (by them) on their actual performance in order for you to give them a report on "each month, quarter, 6 months and year" would be considerable.

People who are bad at budgeting won't be good at continually passing you information on their spend.  Unless you were given access to their accounts - which would be a whole different ball-game with even bigger security and trust issues.

MattyT97

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

grumiofoundation

MattyT97 said:

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

Are you paying your business adviser?