My name is Mike Gulbin. I am a software developer and blogger. I have worked for notable companies such as USPS.com and 1800flowers.com. I also own and author a personal finance blog and a career blog for the INFP MBTI type.

Budgets Stink!

In writing for my personal finance blog, one thing bothered me. Sure I had learned a lot since my early 20′s. The days of spending all of my cash and having no savings were long gone. But now I had a family and I still couldn’t do a basic budget. I couldn’t comprehend websites like mint or use Quicken because they were too confusing.

Dollars Are Like a Box of Navy Seals

At some point in my single life, I came to understand that you need to treat your money like a brigade of military dudes. You are the general and you need to assign every dollar to a rank. You come up with a strategic plan and you send your units of soldiers toward one enemy or the other. This was the best way for me to gain a deeper respect my money. But still came the problem of comprehending what hundreds of soldier dollars were doing at any given time.

I stopped trying to budget the typical ineffective way, which involves being good at organizing and categorization(really not my strong suits) and trending based on the past(I’m into thinking of the future more than the past). I started instead thinking forward to the future. What would I need to buy before my paycheck? What would I WANT to buy? Now what compromises did I have to make with my desire to buy things.

Financial Life Just Got Stable

Fast forward five years. Now I’m married. My wife and I have a baby. Our expenses are fairly predictable. We know that baby supplies come every two weeks. Groceries are every week. Yet from time to time we overdraw our account.

We started managing our money the way I did when I was single. By charting out every single paycheck and every expense we know about. We make these spreadsheets to help us see our day to day balance based on our upcoming transactions. This method works flawlessly for us. It shows us when we’ve made a grave mistake in committing to an expense.

However, doing this in a spreadsheet is very laborious. Its very time consuming. Setting up the transactions for the month is one thing, but if I want to set them up for next month and the month after, it’s ridiculous.

In Comes My Web 2.0 Money Management Software

So I designed a web based version of the spreadsheet. I wanted to make it available to everyone to use for a small amount of money(10 dollars per month is the maximum. I can’t justify services that are more expensive). I started research, brain storming and teaser site creation in early January 2K11. Now I’m moving on to coding.

When Will the Application be Ready?

I plan to have a fully functional application by July of this year.

If you sign up for notifications, you’ll receive an opportunity to become a beta tester and get first notification when the application is available.