NY times had a great article about “Gamification done right” . It presents a great, gamified banking service called “Simple”. I would love to use this, the problem is that I seem to be “married” with my bank for awhile (read: mortgage) and the fact that Simple does not function here in Finland could also pose a problem. Too bad. Using Excel as a budgeting tool sure as hell is not the most motivating option, and somehow I tend to spend all the “extra money” more likely than saving any.
A similar solution (not a bank, but an “intellectual wallet” instead) available is “Pivo”, a Finnish application that helps one in arranging their personal economy. I have actually installed this a couple of months ago, and am still waiting for the e-mail with my access information, so all I can say is that they could probably somehow simplify their joining process or make it more efficient. I tried another app instead, iSpend. The problem with this application seemed to be that since it cannot access my bank accounts information, it is not able to provide me any correct information about my spendings unless I mark every single purchase down everytime I have visited the grocery store. This kind of system is a bit too heavy for me so I just ended up never updating my real money situation to the app and it lost its significance completely.
Saving money actually is great fun, the problem seems to be that spending it is fun also. Now, could I please have an application that would make saving more fun that spending? With goals that I could specify myself? Microsoft Excel, here I come…
