Empower.me possible sponsor?

[CPotter]

Hey!

 

Have any of you heard of empower.me? It's a financial assistant and budgeting app. We might have an opportunity to work with them, but we wanted to get audience feedback before deciding.  

 

[Himommies]

If only i had money to manage

[Dreaper]

 How much do they take out of each transaction? Seems cool but it sounds pointless if they take a cut out in addition to the cut Coinbase or whatever takes. 

[Egg-Roll]

Yea, the financial app is pointless to me as well... I just simply created a php/mysql script for that...

Also for a lot of functions because most bills come thru email (or preset in calendar), so google has me covered.

 

For crypto I don't need nothing for it either, I can self manage...

 

IMO try them because many of your viewers may like them that don't come here. I'm sure they would be open to a 1 or 2 video trial run.

 

3 hours ago, Dreaper said:

 How much do they take out of each transaction? Seems cool but it sounds pointless if they take a cut out in addition to the cut Coinbase or whatever takes. 

It sounds like a TabTrader style app that doesn't do any trading for you.

[vanished]

>notch in advertising materials

0/10 literally unusable

[Fred Castellum]

Has LMG did some background research into these guys? Might be a good idea to find out what exactly their history is and if their founders have had anything sketchy done in the past.

 

I personally believe setting up your own budgeting plan and self managing your own finances is the best route, being self sufficient instead of relying on a 3rd party to handle your own financial planning has it's own merits. 

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, MyInnerFred said:

I personally believe setting up your own budgeting plan and self managing your own finances is the best route, being self sufficient instead of relying on a 3rd party to handle your own financial planning has it's own merits. 

 

(video will jump to the point of the video relevant) Edit: I just noticed the image of the video fits it very well to where it goes to next lol

3 seconds explains everything. Hell even a good paper trail with receipts works wonders, but once again refer to the video above as to why it doesn't work for 99% of the population.

[CPotter]

21 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

Has LMG did some background research into these guys? Might be a good idea to find out what exactly their history is and if their founders have had anything sketchy done in the past.

 

I personally believe setting up your own budgeting plan and self managing your own finances is the best route, being self sufficient instead of relying on a 3rd party to handle your own financial planning has it's own merits. 

I have and haven't found anything bad so far, and I totally agree with you but there's a market for applications like these. Just wanted to ping people here and see if anyone has either used this app or knows of anything bad about it.

[Fred Castellum]

18 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

 

(video will jump to the point of the video relevant) Edit: I just noticed the image of the video fits it very well to where it goes to next lol

3 seconds explains everything. Hell even a good paper trail with receipts works wonders, but once again refer to the video above as to why it doesn't work for 99% of the population.

But people are stupid so they aren't good at handling their own finances? 

 

Hey you have start somewhere, no one is a master financial planner right away. Better to have a starting point to begin with than offloading to some service to handle, the experience itself is worth something.

 

10 minutes ago, CPotter said:

I have and haven't found anything bad so far, and I totally agree with you but there's a market for applications like these. Just wanted to ping people here and see if anyone has either used this app or knows of anything bad about it.

Yeah that's true there is a market for services like that, I just personally think it's better to encourage self learning in something like personal finances. 

 

That aside I haven't been able to find anything bad about their services so far, privately owned not a incredibly large company. 

Should go over their terms a couple of times in case you find something unusual. https://empower.me/terms/

[King_of_Oz]

But... FreshBooks?

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, MyInnerFred said:

Hey you have start somewhere, no one is a master financial planner right away. Better to have a starting point to begin with than offloading to some service to handle, the experience itself is worth something.

Explain that to someone who spends more time on instagram than looking at a few pieces of paper every week... I'm with you on needing to do it yourself (which is why I created the php/mysql) but reality is people keep saying something stupid like "too much work", or "I have no time". So they hope these guys are not scammers and just go with them.

 

Their FAQ tells us how they get the information, and while I'm canadian even if I was a US citizen I would question any app that requires my account information for more than just withdrawals on my behalf (like paypal).

 

And after reading that, I am actually going to recommend avoid them for that very reason, it doesn't matter how they do it or how secure it is. Being a tech channel, this should have red flags everywhere. The real question is would you trust paypal to control your finances? If not then don't trust these guys.

 

Linus keeps harping (rightfully) about safety, this to me isn't safe, only people who should have access to your full banking info is you and your bank.

 

Also based on the time the app has been around on the Apple App Store I have come to the following conclusion about their numbers:

 

200K user

$10 Billion

100 Million Transactions

 

The average user pushes $50K threw their bank account every year, this isn't what they have in the account necessarily or what they earn, but what the app has seen so far, either threw amounts transactions, possibly counting both in and out transactions to get higher amounts. So assuming both in and out are calculated the avg user makes about $25-35K a year.

The average transaction amount their users do is 1.36/day

The above transaction count likely means at least 40% of the users buy a morning drink. (starbucks should offer a discount code for their users) Yes this is a assumption, but logical one at that.

The app only has been around for nearly 1 year on Apple and Dec on Droids

The domain has been around for about 10 years (erm, bought anyone? if not what happened beforehand)

Would you trust them now? I most definitely wouldn't.

 

1 hour ago, King_of_Oz said:

But... FreshBooks?

It's an accounting solution for businesses, this is ment for personal use.

[Fred Castellum]

1 minute ago, Egg-Roll said:

Explain that to someone who spends more time on instagram than looking at a few pieces of paper every week... I'm with you on needing to do it yourself (which is why I created the php/mysql) but reality is people keep saying something stupid like "too much work", or "I have no time". So they hope these guys are not scammers and just go with them.

 

Their FAQ tells us how they get the information, and while I'm canadian even if I was a US citizen I would question any app that requires my account information for more than just withdrawals on my behalf (like paypal).

 

And after reading that, I am actually going to recommend avoid them for that very reason, it doesn't matter how they do it or how secure it is. Being a tech channel, this should have red flags everywhere. The real question is would you trust paypal to control your finances? If not then don't trust these guys.

 

Linus keeps harping (rightfully) about safety, this to me isn't safe, only people who should have access to your full banking info is you and your bank.

 

Also based on the time the app has been around on the Apple App Store I have come to the following conclusion about their numbers:

 

200K user

$10 Billion

100 Million Transactions

 

The average user pushes $50K threw their bank account every year, this isn't what they have in the account necessarily or what they earn, but what the app has seen so far, either threw amounts transactions, possibly counting both in and out transactions to get higher amounts. So assuming both in and out are calculated the avg user makes about $25-35K a year.

The average transaction amount their users do is 1.36/day

The above transaction count likely means at least 40% of the users buy a morning drink. (starbucks should offer a discount code for their users) Yes this is a assumption, but logical one at that.

The app only has been around for nearly 1 year on Apple and Dec on Droids

The domain has been around for about 10 years (erm, bought anyone? if not what happened beforehand)

Would you trust them now? I most definitely wouldn't.

 

It's an accounting solution for businesses, this is ment for personal use.

Oh, you dug out some good information. If that's true then I would avoid them as well. 

[Spotty]

People just need to not spend money they don't have. If they can't already manage that, then a finance app isn't going to help.

 

 

I know this isn't a real persons account, but god damn this really shits me off. In their marketing material they're showing a sample account where a person has $3.5k in credit card debt and another $26.8k in loans - yet they also have $23.5k invested in a savings/investment account. I guarantee the interest rates you're paying on that credit card are going to be higher than the rate of returns you'll get on your investment. The best 'investment' you can make is paying off those bloody debts as soon as possible.
Who the heck thinks it's a good idea to invest their money when they have thousands of dollars worth of credit card debts?!? Probably the same people who think giving a third party app access to all of your banking and financial information is a good idea.

 

At least with your own bank holding your private banking information if the bank is compromised through a hack or data breach, the bank has a responsibility to protect the customers and their money. If this app gets compromised and some Russian steals all your banking information, the app creators will just go "Woops, we're sorry, you're probably going to want to speak to your banks to close your accounts before you lose all your money".

 

 

Doesn't matter how well made, secure, or ethical the app may be, I don't think LinusTechTips should endorse any app that is designed for financial advise or assistance, and definitely not any app that requires your personal financial information and bank login information.