What would be your IDEAL personal financial program? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Hey Guys,

If you could make THE perfect personal finance software that helps you get out of debt and manage your finances, what would it be?  What kind of "stuff" would you build to help your readers reach their financial goals?

I think the only thing that can help some people is to come up with a program that takes everything and calculates an "allowance", locking up all access to their funds and credit cards, while paying their bills and only giving them that allowance each month.  Not very realistic, I know, but since people are their own worst enemy it's the only thing I can think of that would actively help get them out of debt

Eric J. Nisall said:

I think the only thing that can help some people is to come up with a program that takes everything and calculates an "allowance", locking up all access to their funds and credit cards, while paying their bills and only giving them that allowance each month.  Not very realistic, I know, but since people are their own worst enemy it's the only thing I can think of that would actively help get them out of debt

 

Interesting Eric, so kinda like a fully automated bill pay solution that handles all theirs like mortgage/rent, utilities, auto, students, credit cards, etc..and gives them a monthly allowance for entertainment purposes? 

Suba @ Wealth Informatics said:

I agree with Evan. There is no trick to getting out of debt. It is a simple process.

1) Negotiate with the lender and reduce your rate if you can (Ramit Sethi's scripts are more than enough for this)

2) Make a plan and stop getting into more debt (Any snowball spreadsheet can do this and there is a ton of them)

3) Reduce spending (Beyond basic budgeting which can be done with Mint or simple excel, no software can help with this. At this point, it is more than math, now the work is in the consumer's mind)

4) Pay off and not relapse. If they did #3 right, they will be good to go.

The only thing that can be done is changing those spreadsheets into easy to use programs, but that taste varies for each one of us. I feel more comfortable with spreadsheets most of the time because I can do lot of what-if analysis. I do like mint for immediate notifications on my goals and budget tracking. 

What kind of "what-if" analysis helps you?  Something along the lines of, "if i pay an additional "x" amount, i will save "y" amount?"

sooverdebt said:

I have the perfect personal finance system already – PNC Virtual Wallet. Nothing else I've used can touch it. 

 

Interesting, I'm guessing this is only for PNC customers?  Do you mind explaining what it does, and what features you like the most about PNC Virtual Wallet? 

sooverdebt said:

Nope, not going to do your research for you. Check it out: http://www.pncvirtualwallet.com

 

I actually just researched it.  Seems like a lot of features in it that's useful to manage your bills.

I've been using my own custom spreadsheet that I tweak whenver I need to, for so long, that I can't imagine anything would not involve a steep learning curve.