NetworthIQ Blog

• Consumerist posted about free pf apps, no mention of NetworthIQ. NWIQ is not a full fledged pfm, that’s why we built it, a simpler solution #
• Plus, NWIQ is social, so users can talk about their money issues, share ideas, and get help making financial decisions. #
• 7939 registered, can we get 61 in 3 days. Approx. 1000 net worth entries/month for each of last 3 months. #
• Need to track logins better to get idea of activity. Only doing last login now, will change to log every login. Put that on the todo list. #
• Debated sql server - mysql conversion with partner, going ahead as its almost done anyway. App is set, just prepping for data migration. #
• Integrated Twitter Tools WP plugin (http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress) into NetworthIQ blog. The daily digest was just what I needed. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Dropped out of Alexa Top 100k but looks like might be back in soon. Alexa may not be most accurate measure, but is better to see growth. #
• Dumped Typed DataSets, was using them for tag clouds, since it’s handy to run aggregates on them, but MySQL wizards choke in VWD express #
• Hit $100 mark for AdSense, albeit for last two months. Shooting for every month by the end of May. TLA still rules the revenue mix. #
• Bought ISAPI_Rewrite for new server. Hate to spend money when this is free in the LAMP world, but it’s a must have for clean urls in .NET. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Just blogged about the twittering of NetworthIQ at WTC. Off to work now, back tonight, we’ll see if I can get the conversion wrapped up. #
• working on mysql conversion this morning, switching from SQL Server to mysql will give us much more flexibility (technology and cost wise) #
• uploaded new twitter icon #
• performance problems again today, restarted the app a couple of times, and it’s been stable all night fortunately, but I have fix this soon #
• Sent a request to Todd to create a an icon for the NetworthIQ twitter profile. #
• Some have live blogged their startup, others market on MySpace, I’m going to experiment with twittering my web business. Are others? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

There are a number of RSS feeds available on NetworthIQ. If you’re reading this blog, you probably know what RSS is, but if not, it’s essentially a way to subscribe to a web site so that if it gets updated you get notified, rather than having to visit the site itself. You can subscribe to feeds in various feed readers, like Google Reader or Bloglines.

The new tips and blog features provide a great source for getting the latest posts from the NetworthIQ community.

You can get the latest from all users:

Tips Feed
Blogs Feed

Or you can get the latest by tag (BTW, a tag is just a user-defined category, which we use rather than pre-determining categories, tags are much more flexible):

Tips on investing
Blog posts on cars

Or you can get the latest from an individual user:

Tips by mwswi
Blog posts by MrSmith

The tips feature has growing since its release, and you may have also noticed their is a new blogs feature. I noticed many NetworthIQ users would sign up on NetworthIQ and then go off and start their own personal finance blog. I think that’s great, and I imagine there are many who have thought about it as well, so we have now made it easy to share your questions, notes, thoughts, stories, and experiences, that may not go with your monthly entry, directly on NetworthIQ.

For private profiles, your posts will not be available to the public. I’ll be working in the coming weeks on the privacy settings, making it so that if you want to keep your net worth private, but share your tips or blogs you can do so.

I’ve long thought that comparing budgets would be an interesting addition to the site, so we can peak at not only what others have, but what they spend too in order to help guide us to better financial decisions (i.e. if I’m spending more than somebody with a healthy net worth, maybe I should re-examine my spending). Recently there have been a couple of items looking at budgets of various American families that bring this topic back in my head. First, Tiredbuthappy has a post, benchmarking locally reporting on some comparisons in Philadelphia. Then I was reading the Liz Pulliam Weston Money Talk column in today’s paper and she reported the following average annual expenditures for a family of four:

$6351 on food
$871 on housekeeping supplies
$735 on personal care including haircuts
$2953 on clothing

(source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Interesting statistics anyway.

Tired of the personal finance advice you give falling on deaf ears? Want to prevent people from making the mistakes you’ve made in your financial dealings? Looking to pass on great knowledge you’ve gained? Well, then the new tips feature is the perfect way to do it.

Up until now, NetworthIQ has been all about tracking, sharing and comparing your net worth. But, with this release, we step into the realm of helping people increase net worth by allowing users to share their personal finance advice which can be rated and discussed to determine the best tips. The unique thing about sharing advice on NetworthIQ is that you can see who is giving the advice and where they are at in their life, both demographically, and financially.

Advice can fall into any category, anything that would help somebody improve their finances. It could be about:

• Budgeting
• Education
• Career
• Family
• Real Estate
• Retirement
• Insurance
• Loans

Those are just some ideas of what to discuss, and if you’re looking for inspiration, I’ve put together the ultimate collection of personal finance advice

• Money 101
• 50 smartest things to do with your money
• The Top 25 Money Tips of All Time
• 46 Things I Wish My Mom Taught Me About Money
• Who Else Wants To Save Money? 88 Tips, Tricks, Tutorials
• 102 Personal Finance Tips Your Professor Never Taught You
• 10 Common Money Mistakes