NetworthIQ Blog

Thought I’d post about some general personal finance topics here in addition to news and updates on NetworthIQ.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned too much in the pf blogs are the various financial shows on the radio. I figure if people are reading blogs about finance, then they’re probably also listening to radio shows. Plus, with the gaining popularity of podcasting, it will become much easier to listen to the best ones, as it can be difficult to listen for an entire show on the radio. Here’s a few that I know of:

• Ray Lucia - Ray’s on the business talk radio network and I listen to him on my way to work most mornings. Ray’s show covers “Your Money, Your Business, Your Life,” which can result in a wide range of discussions from retirement to real estate to taxes, you name it. His specialty is “Bucketizing” people for retirement, using the principles covered in his book, Buckets of Money. Though the commercial breaks can be frequent and long, I’d highly recommend his show.
• Rob Black - Rob is also on my local business talk radio station (1410 AM in Portland). I’ve listened to him on and off for a few years, and he knows his stuff. Though he usually sounds irritated, his advice is very sound, more so when he gets into “Finance 101″ type discussions. Rob’s show is quite a bit different from Ray’s in that he’ll spend a lot of time discussing individual stocks, but he tempers that with good advice about maxing out retirement and developing good spending habits.
• Dave Ramsey - I haven’t personally listened to him, but I know he is well regarded as an author and radio host. Anyone that preaches staying out of debt is a smart guy in my book. I’ll be breaking out my Shuffle to check out the podcast one of these days.

Any other favorites that would be good to listen to?

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out NetworthIQ, the web’s first social personal finance tool.

One of the issues pointed out by FMF in his post on NetworthIQ and others have in emails to us, is that you should be cautious when comparing your net worth. Our users could skew higher and Americans in general are not saving enough. Both are valid arguments. I believe that the comparison feature will be one of the most interesting parts of the site, Americans (and you Canadians) are competitive people and love to know where they rank. Plus, we’re identifying other data sources, such as Census data, to widen the scope and present a better gauge.

It is smart though, to be cautious when comparing yourself relative to others. You should figure out what your goals are in life/retirement and strive to meet them independent of what others are doing. But, as a (relatively) young person, I know how hard it can be to figure out what you’re going to need in 30 years when you want to retire.

To that end, one of the things that we have been thinking about is adding some more objective measures into the fray. JLP’s post on How to determine if you’re wealthy (and part 2) mentions The Millionaire Next Door (a must read) formula. What others are there? Does anybody have some good resources on other objective measures, both on net worth as a whole and for specific amounts/percentages of the net worth components? I’d love to hear about them so that we can try to work them into NetworthIQ.

Nearly two weeks in now and things are still rolling along. We stand at 156 registered users with 60 of them public, maintaining an approximate 40% rate. The site passed 10,000 page views the other day, and we’re now averaging nearly 1000 page views and 171 unique users a day.

You may have noticed yesterday that we added the ability to browse by category. Madame X was right on top of it, and beat me to the punch with her post yesterday. This feature gives the ability to easily look at the profiles in a particular age group, income range, education level, or occupation. The browsing is part of the overall “compare” feature of the site. But since it only applies to public profiles, we still need a way to compare to all of the private profiles as well (on an aggregrate level), and that’s what we’re working on now.

On the promotion front, the CotC post was a big boost and I’m on the lookout for other places to do similar things. While NetworthIQ is in beta, we’re focusing on spreading the word through bloggers (thanks bloggers!) and word of mouth as much as possible to build a solid userbase. Once we get the compare feature done and some other enhancements, we’ll be ready to bring the site out of beta and start reaching out to the more general personal finance/business sites and publications. Unless of course, through the power of the blogosphere, some big publication picks us up first. That wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all :-).

Not the kind with carousels, cotton candy and interesting characters trying to take your money at ring toss, but blog carnivals. Blog carnivals are weekly roundups of blog postings in a particular subject area.

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up and we’re in it! Be sure to check it out for some other great business/finance posts.

Also, the Carvival of Personal Finance is up over at Free Money Finance. More helpful postings to help you manage your money, and increase your net worth.

We’ve been live now for 7 days and things are moving along at a good pace. There are currently 111 (we passed the century mark mid-day Thursday) users, with 43 public profiles (nearly 40%). Let’s shoot for 500 users in the first month. You want to help get us there? Spread the word to your family, friends, and co-workers.

In our continuing effort to release often, last night we added the ability to browse public profiles and are now displaying demographic information on the public profile. This should give visitors a little context when looking at somebody’s net worth.

There are a lot of little things to get cleaned up this weekend and then we’ll get down to cranking out the comparison feature. I know I’m looking forward to this and it sounds like a lot of you are to.

Have a great weekend!

We made some updates to site last night. On the home page we’ve added the top net worths (I wonder if Dallyn needs any new friends ). Based on some early feedback, we also made the chart bigger. This had the benefit of allowing us to move the ads around a bit and add Amazon to the revenue stream.

In other matters, Jim from The Blueprint for Financial Prosperity put up his review of our site yesterday (and signed up!).

Since yesterday morning we’ve added 18 more users and are up to 84 now. Let’s see if we can crack 100 today.

You may have noticed we feature the most viewed public profiles on the home page of the site. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Well, of course they’re the most popular, they’re featured on the home page.” You’re absolutely correct. Want a way to crack this list? Feature your NetworthIQ profile link in your own site or blog to send readers directly to your profile.

The profile link is http://www.networthiq.com/people/<username> (replace <username> with your username). One of the biggest advantages of being in the popular list is that you can gain new readers from the visitors to our site that see your profile, since you can include a link to your site on your profile page.

NetworthIQ is going strong after 4 days. We’ve been blogged by some of the major personal finance bloggers, including Free Money Finance today. If you hadn’t seen it yet, the Wall Street Journal ran an article (or here) this past weekend about personal finance blogs, and featured Free Money Finance, Consumerism Commentary, PF Blog and MyMoneyBlog. All of which have contributed to NetworthIQ’s development in one way or another.

The site is up to 66 users with a surprisingly high ratio of public profiles. Expect some updates over the next couple of days to make it easier to explore those public profiles.

I’ve been hitting a lot of different places trying to promote the site, and still have a few more to go. If anybody has suggestions about a blog, group, site, etc. that may be interested in NetworthIQ, leave a comment and let us know.

Every once in a while I’ll feature a profile that looks interesting. Sixpack has net worth information going all the way back to the beginning of 2003. That’s so cool, and with a very positiive looking chart as well.

Be sure to check out this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, over at I Will Teach You To Be Rich. NetworthIQ was featured for the post introducing our site. Some other great articles there as well.

Ramit has a great site and if there’s young readers here, be sure you subscribe to him. You’re at a critical time in forming your money habits and he’s got some good advice.

Wow, the early buzz is looking great. 35 users in the first two days is a great start! On Friday I sent invitations to the bloggers I know of, who actively track their net worth. Flexo, over at Consumerism Commentary was right on top of it, writing a review within a couple hours. Hazzard, who writes the Everybody Loves Your Money blog, was right behind with with his post. Thanks guys!

There have also been some great comments and suggestions emailed to us. We appreciate them all, and already have some new ideas to merge into our todo list.