New business idea

Sncjw

How would you keep track and generate reports for hundreds of peopke?

How woild you get the data without breaching any laws?

How would  you gain trust from clients to get the data? 

What would you do if a client wasn't happy like if you say you have gone over budget but they don't think they have.

Are you going to tell them they can't afford to do stuff if they gone over budget.. 

What about extremely low income families who probably need that help the most but can't afford the fee. 

Are you going to create an app? This would cost alot of money to start. 


Just a few questions to ask

MEM62

RogerBareford said:

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?

Because people are often, not knowledgeable, not confident, lazy, prefer someone else to do it or a combination of all of these.  (I can clean perfectly well but I have a cleaner.  I can wash a car but I go to a car wash)  All that aside, sounding out the idea on these forums will not give any meaningful feedback to the OP as it is the wrong place.       

DireEmblem

The concept is a nice one, but modern banks are fairly good at this.

If I take Starling, then you could create a 'space' for each type of bill you have, and setup your direct debits to be charged to them.  Then you can setup a regular payment to each space every time you get paid, so you essentially set aside and spread the cost of monthly/quarterly/semi annual / annual bills equally over each pay cheque.

I used to do this using multiple bank accounts, but then I merged them into one.

All the best.

MalMonroe

MEM62 said:

RogerBareford said:

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?

Because people are often, not knowledgeable, not confident, lazy, prefer someone else to do it or a combination of all of these.  (I can clean perfectly well but I have a cleaner.  I can wash a car but I go to a car wash)  All that aside, sounding out the idea on these forums will not give any meaningful feedback to the OP as it is the wrong place.       

Some people also have disabilities which make it difficult or impossible for them to clean or wash a car or in fact do any housework at all.  

CKhalvashi

MovingForwards said:

My bank lets me keep track of budgets and spending for free. On top of that my phone came with a spreadsheet type package, again free.

I would never pay someone for doing it, especially as there's a whole load of information and free planning / budgeting tools online.

Agree.

I use Google Docs to create a rough annual budget, both in business and personally. It's free.

For the business end, we then create a fixed monthly 'pot' of money divisionally (which is subject to change based on demand, this year is seeing almost daily changes due to opportunities opening up in rapid succession) and set revenue targets based on this.

For the personal end, I calculate what everything should be with a 10% overage and set goals based on this.

I definitely don't pay £15-30/month for this and also definitely wouldn't.

I like spreadsheets, they're easily customisable and don't require large amounts of faffing around.

MalMonroe

MattyT97 said:

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.

Hi, sorry but I don't think this is a good idea. As others have said, this information can be acquired without cost from many other different sources.

Do you have any financial adviser qualifications? How would you sell your services?

There are at least three free national debt help agencies people can turn to if they need help with finances. Not just solutions when they are in trouble but also general advice.

About 9 years ago I was in dire financial straits and contacted one of the free agencies. They helped to get me on the right track financially and along the way I learned how to budget for myself. Setting up personal financial spreadsheets on a computer is relatively easy and anyone can then work out their own reports and work out whether or not they are on track. People who are bad at budgeting (me, most of my life) can be taught how to budget - or teach themselves, something I had to do - and that's probably a better solution than spending even more money having someone else sort out their money.

It may work initially, i.e. helping people to set up their own online systems but I can't see it being a job where you'd be on regular contracts. Once the system's set up, people will be able to use it themselves.

And to be honest, I'd have to check through everything thoroughly myself at the end of the day anyway, so it'd be a waste of time and money. 

wmb194

Ugh. I'm not sure why so many people are saying there's no market for this when there clearly is - just go and have a look at e.g., the Apple and Google app stores and search for 'budgeting.' The problem is that you're up against some established competition - I've not used them but IIRC Emma and YNAB are the biggest at the moment. Perhaps you can see something they're missing and you can charge for a niche but there's a lot of competition in this space. 

Personally, I'd just recommend people create a spreadsheet or find a (free) copy of Microsoft Money 2005 UK.

Daliah

wmb194 said:

Ugh. I'm not sure why so many people are saying there's no market for this when there clearly is 

I think people read into the OP's post that the OP would provide a personalised service for which they could charge £15-£30 a month.  If so, I would agree, there is no market for so such an offering.

If the OP's post was misinterpreted, and it is just a YNAB/Emma etc type of app, without personal service, then there is still no market for it if it costs £15-£30 a month. People will just not pay this amount of money for it.

But even if it was significantly cheaper, it would be tremendously difficult to break into what is already a crowded market, with well established players who have, in many cases, hundreds of man person years of experience - - - and which often offer their app for free. You'd have to find something very unique to make significant inroads.  

Potbellypig

OP - If you're going to offer that kind of service then your customer probably wants something more than just a budget calculation in return. If you're going to build this kind of business then a starting point would be to offer a free no obligation quote to look into customers I&E and find ways that they can save money on their bills. If you can save them X amount or get X % off their bills then they'll be charged. Long winded and certainly means you putting a lot of time into it, but businesses don't just pop up with no effort. You may have to work for years getting this kind business up before you see any sort of profit. It's definitely a viable business but not an easy one, in my opinion.

Daliah

Potbellypig said.

It's definitely a viable business 

That's a grand statement to make. And I doubt that it is actually true because if it was, the smart cookies at YNAB etc or one of the many FinTecs, would long have ventured into it. That's assuming they aren't doing it already, which I think is highly likely, but much much cheaper than £15-£30 a month,


But if I'm wrong - who do you reckon the target market would be? How many people would pay £15 - £30 a month for it?