Business Idea -- Would you use (or people you know) use it?

[rylandking]

Hey fellow Mustachians!

I stashed $97k over the last 3.5 years, and am trying to take the "freedom business" route cap off my FI.

What do you think about this potential business idea?

1. Link your accounts and we give you a forecast graph of where you'll be monetarily if you continue your current habits.
2. Each month we send you an email telling you exactly what to do money-wise to get you ready to invest.
3. You get to use the product for free until your projection actually improves.

Would you or a friend use it? For like $2.99/mo or something.

[maizefolk]

Two concerns occur to me:

1) Your target audience would be people who are actively trying to cut recurrent expenses.

2) If it turns out there is demand, would there be a barrier to someone else setting up a similar service and undercutting your pricing (or doing it for free but with ads tailored based on the financial info they'd be pulling down*).

*Essentially this is Mint's business model.

[trashmanz]

Essentially personal capital will project out like that but they don't update the savings amount automatically from your linked account. It would be just a few lines of code for them to add the option. Not exactly something I'd spend time on developing when the established players can easily implement. Already I don't trust personal capital with my account info and enter manually so I do not think I'd be likely to trust another startup with my account info and have to get charged a few on top of that.