Planwise: How Can it Impact Your Financial Future?
While the investing realm has seen its fair share of advancement in the information age, one thing that has yet to really happen is an outburst in technological innovation in the personal finance industry. The most well known personal finance tool by the average individual is Mint.com, though there is a new player in this arena: Planwise.
Giving you the power.
The main focus at Planwise is to create a tool that allows the average person to model their financial future before it happens. An example would be; you have a plan to take a vacation in September and you also want to buy a new car at the end of the year but you also want to have the down payment for a house by the end of the following year. Taking that vacation will impact both the purchase of the car and the down payment of the house but what seems to really slip peoples mind is that the cost of owning a car is ongoing. The monthly expenses of the car and the unexpected ones. Planwise can help you model how these different scenarios before they happen to make sure you can be prepared for them if they happen.
The core of Planwise is essentially a “cash at bank” graph (seen here). You have a monthly income and monthly, weekly or other random interval expenses. Over a period of time this graph should be going in an upward right direction (meaning you are saving more than spending). It may not be as much as you’d hope but it’s better than the graph going downward right (meaning you are running out of money). If that is the case in your scenario we let you know that with a simple notification. In the current version of Planwise this is the only notification available. While this is valuable it only helps you if you’re going to run out of money.
Taking the next big step – Planwise will show you how to have more money.
As the Planwise team has recently grown so has our vision of creating a tool that becomes invaluable. In the next big release of Planwise, we give the tool a brand new look and an introduction to what we are calling ‘Alerts’ which should be hitting your computer screens in September!
There is a lot of information that be revealed with just your basic financial information (even with no personal data). This is where the Alerts come into play. After creating your profile and adding in any property, loans, credit cards and expenses you have we can surface information back to you that can increase your financial standing.
Here are a few examples:
You are currently paying just $60 on your credit card each month and are saving $200 dollars every month. This does put more cash into your bank account now but we can tell you if you paid $125 every month you would save $400 dollars on interest over the course of paying off your credit card.
You are currently saving 5.2% of your income every month. Great job! The average American saves about 3.8% of their income every month. While this statistic is a positive one it can be flipped to let you know that you are in fact saving less than the average American and we will suggest that you review your expenses to see if anything can be cut back or removed.
To sum it all up.
In the end, the overall vision for Planwise is to give people the power to understand their current financial situation, see the impact to their future situation based on any plans they might have and take positive action to be better off financially. All for no cost, without having to have a degree in finance or technology and in a matter of minutes every month.
To launch Planwise, click on the following link.
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