Observation: A lot of "regular" people aren't good at or interested in perfecting their personal finance situation. They also don't know how to buy things.

Examples:

-My dad wants to buy a new TV, he goes to Best Buy, think he's getting a good deal and pay with a check or his debit card.

-My dad wants to get a savings account\investment account, he goes down to the neighborhood bank and signs up for one.


Idea: I want to buy things for people in the most optimal way. I also want to make the most optimal personal finance decisions for people.

Examples:

-I'll go online, shop around the best prices (using sites like slickdeals.net), find coupons/discounts in any way possible. Eventually buy his TV on a credit card that will get the highest % cash back.

-I'll do all the research on savings/investment accounts and concisely give him his best options.


I guess I would be a Personal Finance\Purchasing Advisor that essentially perfects most aspects of personal finance decisions. I would do all the work for people when deciding on the best savings account\investing accounts\credit cards\places to buy things\ways of buying things, etc.

My idea is centered around the idea that a lot people don't like or have the time to read up on every personal financial decision.

I would be different from a typical Financial advisor. I wouldn't be picking stocks for you at all.

I don't really know how to start a business and profit from this idea but it's something i've always wanted to do.

Idea has potential. Similar to an idea my friend had a few years back for a business that examines your monthly expenses (cell phone, utilities, cable, internet, etc.) and offers ways to save.

I had the same idea about a year ago. I'll expand on it with my thoughts

I was thinking.. how do you get these people who don't really care about making proper financial decisions do decide to let you do it for them? It's a tough sell. It's sort of similar to selling coaching to the table fish.

The other issue is how to make it profitable. Do you just charge a monthly/yearly fee and give them the option to contact you for every decision? Do you send a monthly bill at your discretion based on how much time of you spent "advising" them ?

When considering this I was thinking about calling myself a "Financial consultant" and acting as a financial adviser that offers extra services such as deal-finding, garage sale conducting, or essentially anything that helps save/make money for my client with his/her resources.

To market, I was thinking about signing up at various clubs to network (squash, tennis, golf, poker, gyms) and selling door-to-door as a regular daily gig.

It's an idea I still toy around with. Maybe next year.

90% of the time, people can just go to Amazon.com and find the best - or nearly best - price with minimal hassle and time wasted.

With financial products, if someone wants something for the sake of using something, it takes minimal time to look up on financial sites/blogs. Gobs and gobs of financial sites with solid advice out there and it's not like your clients are the $50 bonus chasers.

On top of that, if you are truly providing top advice, you would not be making any money as your research time would be substantial and therefore would need to cost substantial amount.

Basically, you are trying to design something optimal thinking it will be cheap, and not recognizing the value of existing options that get you 95% towards optimal at a fraction of the price of your potential service.

This is a good reason why I like coming at it from a monthly expenses angle. Probably 90% of people are paying too much for some service. I imagine there are whole regions where everyone should be using Service A but are instead using Service B simply because they've never heard of A or can't be bothered to switch on their one. But if you offer to switch people, getting them the save service at the same price and taking 50% of the savings for the first year, that could be a good deal for everyone.

To this point, while I'm sure something like this exists already, it would be cool to see an ecommerce site that was "Only the Best" or something along those lines that would only sell one of each particular item type, but it's the best one as judged by whatever criteria you want.

You want a juicer? "Only the Best" has the one and only juicer you'll ever need.

Looking for a pair of headphones? Forget spending 17 hours reading HeadFi and coming away more confused than you started. Come to "Only the Best" and you'll have one option.

And you can segment products a little where it makes sense:

You want a small TV? "Only the Best" has picked out the best TV below 27 inches. There there's a medium section for 27"-42", and a large section for over 42".


You wouldn't even have to hold inventory or make a real "store" if you wanted. You could just get an Amazon affiliate account and run everything through that. At that point it's strictly a marketing and conversion exercise.

This is right where I am coming from. A similar example is when I see people buy hundreds of dollars worth of groceries with cash/checks/debit cards when I know there's a 6% cash back American Express card that will save them hundreds per year, they just don't know about it or understand how to do it or are afraid of something like this. (I realize there are various reasons why not everyone can do this example but I believe a lot of people can, to some degree).

I would love to find a way to master this stuff, teach people about it, save them money and make a little money for myself.

** I trimmed your quote down, I hope that's OK.

Also exactly where I am coming from. Some sort of "member's only" service, they just say what they want and all the research and recommendations are done for them. Ranging from TV's to new credit cards, to bulk toothpaste purchasing, to savings accounts, etc. Start out with a list of "mastered" topics and expand.

The long term value being that things are constantly changing and one recommendation is going to be different from the recommendation a month ago.

To your Amazon affiliate point, i don't think I want to be limited to one retailer as my products / services I provide would be generated from the entire internet. I am more of a purchasing / personal finance consultant rather than a store. I might have mis-understood what you meant though.

9duece,

As I indicated in my prior post, I think there is a strong regional element to this. I think you're best play is to choose your local region and figure out the best deals on things like cable and phones. It may be the case that everyone using company A is paying $20 more than they could be paying for the exact same service of company B. Find these discrepancies, print up a bunch of flyers, and canvass the area. You may also be able to rake in referrals from the company's you're switching people to.

@The9deuce

sorry didn't read everything but I didn't find the word Billshrink mentioned in the thread yet so if you are interested in this space I suggest watching episode 11 of This week in Startups with the CEO of Billshrink.
On this week in Venture Capital there was an episode with someone who started a similar business but idk the exact show.

Thanks for the suggestion. I watched most of that 2 hour video this afternoon, i'll have to look for the Venture Capital one.

I did check that Billshrink site out a little while watching the video, it's very similar to what I want to do but I don't like their approach (although their approach might be the most profitable).

You give it basic criteria and populates blanket suggestions. Every time I do one of these, I feel like I need to tell it more info and don't feel it's personalized enough so I never end up utilizing it. Maybe others feel differently?

I like the idea of calling/emailing/submitting a web form to a consultant saying what I'm looking to do, then they get back to me in a timely manor with what I should do. I can trust it because I know a reputable person/company looked into it.

I would like to come at it from the angle that I'm a personal financial assistant/advisor/consultant that I could charge a flat fee for. Similar to how you have your real financial advisor come to the house, or you go to their office but a much more streamline version where there would be no meeting at all. It would all be through phone/email/web interface, but you know it's much more personal than these blanket review/suggestion websites.

I'm not sure the intention of this thread is to discuss an idea to death so if anyone wants to discuss further, feel free to PM me at any time. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I would be careful in calling yourself a financial consultant as various States have different guidelines for the need to be registered or accredited in some manner. Frankly, the financial personal consulting field has a shady history as many times they have been set-up more like a different distribution channel for ill conceived financial products. Historically, compensation for this type of profession is tied to the steering of customers to products rather than the quality of the advice.

what you are really trying to offer here is type of "shopping maven" service. The question is how can one monetize these transactions securely (minimizing accounts receivable risk) and with enough volume to make it a reasonable career for yourself.

You could try to run a beta test of sorts by running an ad on a website such as "taskrabbit" with perhaps a compensation model of a percentage fee of the savings. The risks that you face here are twofold: a) the customer decides not buy the product after all b) you have unsecured AR

Also, the services you provide in my IMO are not well suited for finding long term deals for the customers as there is no reliable manner to calculate your
fee. i.e. customer switches to a 2% cash back credit card.. how does one determine what your fair share of that deal? A percent of their expenditures for x months? how can you track that? how do you time your invoices?.. etc.

overall, this is an intriguing idea but difficult to pull out on a personal level. Another variant might be to create a blog with daily savings advice, drive in traffic, build a e-mail customer base and make your money from ad revenue.

Thanks for your input. I agree it would be tough to monetize the exact value I am providing, then come up with a fee the customer would understand/be happy with. This definitely would be one of many significant hurdles.

I also agree on the title, I would have to be careful with it. I don't want to be involved the securities world at all.

I am thinking of starting a blog or forum to start. Possibly a forum with sub forums where people could discuss and essentially "master" these personal finance topics. It wouldn't be limited to just credit cards, or savings accounts, or personal purchasing, or cable/internet providers, etc. These would all be topics that people could discuss and "perfect". Then possibly the next step would be summarizing and creating a service out of that down the road.

Does anyone know of a forum that exists like this? PM me if anyone else would like to discuss something like this further.

I think this would be pretty good. I don't know of anything like it. Although, I think it would be better provide recommendations based on more on expected use and price range. ie: "pocket camera for casual use: best for any price: best under $200, best under $100". I find I spend too much time trying to figure out whether reviewed product actually fits in my price and needs frame.

Idea:
A whack-a-mole game where the "moles" are digital displays. You can upload pics of your boss, ex-girlfriend, a politician, etc to whack.

I've got loads of ideas, but I haven't started an idea book yet so it takes a lot of effort to write down and recollect the details of a lot of them so I'll try to share them as I they come up in my thoughts.

I don't think this is particularly viable, but I thought it was interesting anyways. The logistics may be too difficult and possible margins too low. Plus, the target demographic may have the means to get it done anyways (concierge, assistants). The amount of people buying flowers today and the amount of people shopping for valentine's day gifts made me realise that people often forget or put off organising things like valentine's day, mother's day, father's day, and birthdays. My idea is to offer "last second" special event packages. Offer the ability to order until as late as possible (noon? 1pm?) and have a delivery window for certain areas. In a major city you could maintain a relatively small delivery area and still reach thousands and thousands of customers delivering to workplaces. Packages could be things like gift + flowers, or gift + flowers + theatre tickets + dinner reservation + transport. Obviously things like dinner reservations could be quite difficult logistically.

sounds like a good idea, and fairly easy to do to no? maybe a bit cumbersome to actually upload the pic

is there a website that logs like all the history of average prices for flights to and from specific destinations throughout the year.

like if im planning a trip from phx to hawaii in may is there somewhere i can go and find out what a bad, average, good, great price is for a round trip ticket during my specific dates are?

Here is one:

There is a little Chinese restaurant by my house. It has great food but the problem is that it is packed for the $6.25 lunch buffet and then completely dead when the dinner prices are $8-$10 an item. Essentially, the same food for $6.25 fills the room, while the higher normal prices leaves the place a ghost town.

What I thought was to setup a website where mom and pop restaurants can create specific time sensitive deals to help them get people into the door at down times or during down days. Basically a user would hop on the website and check out all of the good deals going on at lunch or before dinner and then pay or reserve the price for the next hour. This gets people into the door at the exact times the business needs it and saves people extra money on a wide array of food choices.

An example would be the Chinese place offering a half off deal for an item that can only be reserved for 60 minutes. If someone were browsing the website, they would see this deal and reserve it with their information and telephone #. The buyer has to be ready to eat and pay for the meal right away.

This accomplishes a couple things:

Restaurants can get more people into the door at times when it's usually most dead. Essentially they would be able move their menu prices up and down to meet demand, without having to change their regular menu prices. They could also just throw up a half price deal every now and again for good cheap advertising. The restaurants would be able to control their own deal pages to update and change prices or simply take everything down if they are getting enough business at that time.

People would be able to check out a wide range of meal deals on one site and get something they want right away at a great price. Think of how many people would love to try something different or go get a great sandwich for 30% off that they pay full price for anyways. It would be like an instant groupon that is way easier to use.

The website makes money by either charging restaurants a monthly fee or gets a small percentage of every sale. Either way it is a win-win-win for everybody.

I'm already working on another business idea but if anyone wants to get into this venture with me hit me up!

CardX,

I think the idea you posted about restaurants giving deals that expire quickly makes a lot of sense. The idea would face a lot of hurdles such as start up cost and monetizing the site even if it did become popular though.

I live in Austin so I naturally think of central Austin near UT as a place where launching this website could work. Good luck if you ever do pursue the idea.

Hey thanks. I'm actually in Dallas but only been here a few months. What I wrote popped into my head very recently, so start up costs, etc are not thought out yet. I guess I come from a bootstrapping background, so getting this off the ground doesn't seem too hard to me, besides funding.

I definitely think it could spread to where users (restaurant owners) would create there deal page profiles and that would make them pretty sticky from competition. Making it easy for owners to get time sensitive customers and also giving them total control on pricing deals would be the competitive advantage of the company, as owners most likely wouldn't want to monitor more than one deals page if mine was easy to use and accomplished what they need.

A lot more will probably pop into my head as I keep thinking about this. I usually keep things to myself but thought this thread was a really great idea!

http://www.coca-colafreestyle.com/

2 ideas

I think there is a huge market for some kind of machine that cleans (the bottle) and bottles tap water in school. Every kid has a water bottle at their desk these days. Then make some kind of designer sleeve they can put the universal water bottle in to differentiate it from the other students. Just think how many kids wash their own water bottle every day....like 2% at the most. I am sure it just adds to kids getting sick everyday.

My 2nd idea...
amateur comedy website...
with everyone getting a video phone these days more people can record themselves.
have a prize for best joke of the day & month
have a prize for best 3 min routine for the month.
revenue of course just advertising & t-shirts

Lowermybills.com

And Peter Pham started a similar company called Billshrink.

Not exactly, but this might be useful:
http://www.bing.com/travel/about/howAirPredictions.do

iPhone app idea/notification manager

i like playing a bunch of turn-based games but don't want my phone notifying me all the time but still don't want to miss/forfeit games from not noticing it was my turn, notifications are especially useless when sleeping, busy, etc but i think it's necessary to have them on or you would have to go into the program on occasion to see if it's your turn? i'd like a single program that would manage all these games and allow me to cycle through each of them or something when it's my turn but otherwise just hold back all the notifications until i decide i have time to play the games.

perhaps this is already available in some form or i'm not aware of appropriate settings?