The decisions listed (buying a house, retiring, paying for college, etc) are all fairly infrequent, separated by many many years - so not much value from return users. I think getting $$$ from people for that is going to be very very tough unless they can quickly expand and become the "financial decision-making engine" for pretty much every $500+ purchase in your life.
If that's not in the cards, they must be thinking of (A) targeting intermediaries (e.g. mortgage people at banks to use with their clients), or maybe (B) planning something a-la-Mint (e.g. present you with relevant offers to whatever it is you're considering buying/leasing)... or maybe something else?
Curious to hear how you guys are planning to monetize...
the obvious one is about three comments down - a guy in the UK wants to join up and use the engine. I suspect that most mortgage providers would be happy to have you play with a "independent" site that shows you how much richer you will be in 20 years if you buy their mortgage, and price comparison sites would love to show you which mortgage will pay off most in 10 and 20 years.
That's probably worth following up - is there a way of putting multiple mortgage lines in there ? I assume its doable.
This could well be problematic under UK financial regulations. You are giving financial advice, which is a regulated activity and as far as I can see hard to do with automated services under the existing rules, for personalised services like this (and also if you charge). Most financial advice is from journalists who are basically exempt from the rules, or are generic not personalised.
The situation in the US is fairly similar I thought, would be interested in the legal situation there, as I think this type of service is very useful for people.
we intend to build a platform for all personal finance decisions. the home purchase decision is just the tip of the iceberg and even here we are just getting started. In 18 months we intend to be able to provide personalized, interactive answers to over 200 questions, on topics from car buying to going back to school, to family and retirement planning.
If that's not in the cards, they must be thinking of (A) targeting intermediaries (e.g. mortgage people at banks to use with their clients), or maybe (B) planning something a-la-Mint (e.g. present you with relevant offers to whatever it is you're considering buying/leasing)... or maybe something else?
Curious to hear how you guys are planning to monetize...