The idea behind Budget Beacon started this past summer when I realized that I wasn’t holding up my end of the “Five Year Plan” bargain. What is the “Five Year Plan” you ask, well, when we (my girlfriend and I) bought our current condo we agreed on a “Five Year Plan” that would put us in a larger place in…. you guessed it, 5 years. Well five years is coming due in August 2010, and I’m nowhere near my required savings number.
Lest I suffer the wrath of a woman who has been patiently awaiting closet space that can actually accommodate 23 pairs of identical black pants and countless shoe boxes stacked in a precariously shaky format, I need to get my savings on!
Seriously though, I whipped out open office and tried getting all my bank and credit transactions in some sort of readable format, then tried to sort them into something that would tell me where all my money’s going. It worked… sort of.
Everything was there but it was pretty painful trying to figure out where I should be cutting back, and what things looked like month over month. This led to me to search for some sort of online 2.0 app that would handle things in a more elegant fashion. I found a few, really good ones too, but they missed the mark in a couple of key areas:
- Need to be in the USA and have a US bank account.
- Too many things going on…I don’t need to track my investment portfolio here!
- Most importantly, I don’t want an accounting program, all I want to know is where I’m spending my money and where I can cut back
Based on this, and the constant nagging gentle reminders from my significant other, I’ve decided to build my own little app which will do just this, track my expenses and give me pretty reports.
As for features, I’m trying to keep it simple. Being an adherent of the the 37 Signals “Getting Real” philosophy, I’m starting with the bare minimum. Now you ask, “What is the bare minimum?” and “Will I have to pay for it”? The answer to the second question, is no, the app will be free. (Sign up here to be notified when we open for beta testers.)
The answer to the first question… come back next week, we’ll be writing an article outlining our first draft of minimum requirements!
