Personal Finance Blog | Money Management Blog | Financial Help

Overspending, in many ways, is what is at the root of most people’s financial problems. Essentially, they spend more money than they have and put the rest on credit. They build up debt until it reaches critical mass and then either cut back out of necessity or, use the equity in their home to pay it off and start the whole cycle again. Talk about mortgaging your future away.

At Finicity, one of the first things we tell people is to start spending within their income and get to “30 days funded” as soon as possible. Having a full month’s worth of income in the bank allows you to schedule all of your bills to be paid automatically and provides you with a cash buffer that prevents you from accumulating further debt. The way you accomplish this is make a commitment to yourself to spend within your envelope balances 100% of the time.

That’s why you need to set up a budget and stick to it. The problem is that “budget” may be a bit of a bad word. It implies things like responsibility and accountability—stuff no one, including myself—really likes to think about. However, having a budget and employing personal fiscal responsibility is the only way to truly achieve your financial goals—like getting out of debt and reducing your financial stress.

Fortunately, Finicity Money Manager makes that a whole lot easier. By using it to plan your expenses before you spend, you can meet all your financial obligations and still have money left over to maintain the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to. Truthfully, having a budget usually means having more money in your account—not less. And that’s peace of mind that is far more valuable than any safety net an overdraft account will provide.

Nick Lashley, Customer Support

I guess we all like going out to eat more than we think because that was by far the most popular response (with 49% of the votes) by the more than 300 participants of the survey  in our personal finance community on Finicity.

The second most popular answer (with 19% of the votes) was contributing to savings, so it’s good to know we still value savings…but maybe not as much as eating out.

So why do we enjoy eating out so much - because it’s something we all do…either daily, weekly or monthly?

Obviously, the ease of having someone else prepare your food for you is pretty nice…and usually the food tastes better when you go out too. But maybe there’s something else when it comes to eating out during an economic downturn. It may be a way to escape from the day to day pressures and enjoy some type of luxury since most of the other luxuries diminish during hard times. Or maybe it’s our need to socialize (and not the food) and to be in a social environment with family, friends, co-workers, etc.

Whatever the reasons, we all like going out to eat. And some of the cherished times for my wife and me are those days when we’ve had a hectic week and we’re able to find a babysitter and get away for an enjoyable dinner together – full of laughter, great conversations, good food, delectable desserts, and free from kids whining and crying.

Bon appetit!

Corey Davis, Marketing

We’re excited that Nicholas Thomas (Finicity co-founder and COO) will be speaking tomorrow at AJAXWorld in San Jose, CA about the future of Internet Software Services.

Here are some excerpts from his presentation.

Mark Wieser, former Chief Scientist at Xerox PARC, envisioned a world where computers provided services to us but did not command our full attention to derive value from them. He fathered the concept of a third era of computing following the Mainframe and PC eras called the Ubiquitous Computing era, where computers were invisible, everywhere, and with us in the real world. The good news? We have finally arrived in that era. The bad news? Internet Software Services need to do more to match Marks original vision.

Many software services on the Internet leverage advertising to generate revenue, but this business model requires its users to be glued to the computer screen to see and click through to other offered products or services. Premium Internet Software Services seeking to become truly ubicomp must free their users from the tyrannical attention-hogging PC-era and present just-in-time information (JITI) to their customers without the burden of clickthrough rates.

Because Fincity’s business model is subscription-based, the company can and is developing ubicomp solutions to enable its users with just the financial information they need at the time and place they need it most … when making the spending decision. Although after-the-fact reporting is helpful to analyze spending trends and past mistakes, Finicity seeks to give our customers the information they need at the point where the spending decision is made.

Finicity pioneered Rich Internet Applications with its first AJAX and WAP clients in 2004 and our Adobe FLEX client in 2006. We are now announcing the development of a new Adobe AIR client for PC, MAC, and Linux that will provide our customers with information they need at a glance without launching a browser. In addition, we are are exploring other ways to provide users with their personal financial information outside of company-developed software clients.

Cheers,

The Finicity Team

A few weeks ago an old friend of mine was venting on his blog about the costs of an unexpected auto repair. Having been there before, I read his post with a great amount of empathy.  I am not exactly sure what broke, but it was apparently something that made a lot of noise and was several hundred dollars to fix.  His family was then faced with the dilemma that many of us have been in before – I don’t have the money to fix it. But I can’t get the money if I can’t get to work, and I can’t get to work without a car.  So, out comes the credit card!

He is a professor at a university a short distance from his home.  The university is too far away to walk, however, and they live in a somewhat rural area - so public transportation wasn’t really a viable option for him either.  He did the only thing he could think of at the time – he increased his debt load to cover the cost of the repair by putting it on a credit card.

The first problem with this plan is that he will not be able to pay off the credit card in full this month, and probably not next month either.  With interest charges, his several hundred dollar repair will end up costing significantly more!

The second problem in my opinion is that he views car repairs as an unexpected cost.   Now don’t get me wrong, I am not judging – I used to be the same way.   My car has definitely had more than its share of repairs, and without fail, they were always “unexpected.” And since I never had the cash on hand to cover the costs of the repairs, I would just put them on my credit card because, “Hey, I need a car!”   Unfortunately, those balances add up fast!  And the interest charges are brutal!

In reality, these expenses are not really unexpected – cars break down and need to be maintained.  It’s just another periodic expense that I needed to plan for.  Thankfully, I learned the principles of envelope money management and was able to implement these concepts using the Money Manager.   Sure, it took quite a while to build up a balance in my “car maintenance” envelope, because I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room in my spending plan.  However, even putting in $10 here and $20 there into that envelope helped when it came to things like windshield wiper blades, washer fluid, oil changes, etc.  And most importantly, it has prevented me from putting those purchases onto a credit card that I couldn’t pay off.

Jennifer Streiff, Business Development

When my wife and I were married, neither of us had ever created or used a budget or even balanced a checkbook, for that matter. We were both, as Dave Ramsey says, “Free Spirits.” When I joined Finicity, over three years ago, I was very impressed with and excited about our flagship product, the Money Manager (formerly Mvelopes). So I quickly became the “Nerd” in our marriage, when it came to finances, kind of by default. It is crazy to think about how far we have come in that amount of time. Everyone wants a quick fix, that magic pill that will make all of their problems disappear into the ether. But the truth is, no matter what your problems are, or whatever it is you want to change in your life, it’s NOT going to be resolved immediately or happen overnight. Change takes discipline and continuous effort. I like the way Ramsey puts it—change is a “process” not an “event.”

Don’t get me wrong, we still have a long way to go in building our wealth, but we have made a lot of changes along the way. One of the things I was hoping would change in this process was my wife asking me (more…)

Recently I’ve been hearing a commercial on the radio from Chevron about “Better Mileage Tips.” Chevron advises,

“Simply decreasing your freeway speeds to 55 mph can increase your fuel economy by as much as 20 percent.”

I consider myself a driver who likes to keep up with “the flow” of traffic, and driving 55 mph on the freeway sounds insane! Come on–that’s almost suicide! I’ve passed cars that seem to be driving deathly slow (and they look like they’ll be driven off the road with the way everyone furiously passes them), but I would bet that even they aren’t driving THAT slowly. Maybe I’m a speed demon at heart, or just suffer from a lead foot, but when I first heard this ad I seriously thought, “Who are they kidding?” However, with the current gas prices, my more practical side wants to believe what Chevron has claimed.

I have decided to put their claim to the test! Can driving 55 mph on the freeway really save me money and better my gas mileage? We will soon find out!

I challenge everyone else out there to perform their own test and join my Finicity group, “Club 55 MPH.” I’ll post the details of my test there and plan to frequently give updates to the “Club 55 MPH” group forum.

If you want to, you can watch the video of the Chevron ad – it’s similar to the version I’ve been hearing on the radio. And here is a link to some of the other tips they’ve listed as well.

I’ll post my final results back here on the blog, so stay tuned!

Kristopher Higley, Designer

Yesterday, Finicity was named the 25^th fastest growing company in Utah by Utah Business magazine. Surrounded by very impressive companies (Omniture, Doba, Skullcandy) here in Utah, we’re excited to be part of Utah’s growth as a leader in technology. But more importantly, we’re excited for all of you, our customers, who are reaching your financial goals with our money management tools.

It’s at times like this where it’s fun to pause and take a walk down memory lane.

1999 - Company is founded under the name In2M

2002 – First product is launched. Mvelopes was originally a PC-based personal finance software product that synced with PDAs. The name Mvelopes came from combining “mobile” with “envelopes” (based on the traditional envelopes method of budgeting)

2004 – Mvelopes goes online and becomes a web-based money management system

2006 – Mvelopes is awarded PC World’s 2006 World Class Award

2006 – PC World names Mvelopes one of “The 100 Best Products of Year”

2007 – Company changes its name to Finicity (combining “finance” with “city” to represent a personal finance community)

2007 – Finicity partners with personal finance experts David Bach and Laura Rowley

2007 – Finicity named ninth fastest growing company in Utah

2007 – US Bank and Finicity partner to create Finicity Home Loans

2008 – Finicity.com is launched, offering its money management tools together with a community support system so users have what they need to reach their financial goals

Cheers,

The Finicity Team