MoneyPatrol: Product Rules
Just as every game has rules that players have to follow, the MoneyPatrol product also has a set of rules that we highly encourage our users to follow and adhere to.
These rules are very simple, yet very important and effective in helping us achieve MoneyPatrol’s mission of making its users become aware and mindful of their money and personal finances.
These rules are applicable and should be followed regardless of which stage of the financial journey you are currently in. For example, you could be currently a student with hardly any money, or someone who has just started his professional career, or someone who is already a couple of years into his career or are someone who is a stay-at-home Mom or a Dad, or are someone who is about to retire, or are someone who has already retired. You could be someone who has only a few dollars in the bank, or someone who has a couple of thousands in the bank, or someone who has a couple of millions in net worth.
Regardless of who you are and your current financial status, you should absolutely stick to these rules. Note that we are very serious about having your commitment to our product. If you are someone who currently has a casual approach towards money, then want you to become serious and devoted to this product and methodology.
We are being very blunt in expressing our thoughts through these rules. If you cannot handle tough words, or you feel offended by our straightforwardness, then we are not the right product for you. This product is also not designed to entertain you.
Rule # 1: Commitment
You will mentally commit to using this product on a regular basis. Ideally, we want you to use this product daily, but we understand that due to busy lives it may not be possible for you. However, if you are using any social media such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc., daily to entertain yourself, then just stop giving an excuse that you don’t have time to look at what’s happening with your money and finances. Granted looking at your finances is not a fun activity such as checking out what’s happening in your friend’s life, but we want to get you into the positive habit of looking at your finances regularly so that you can stay ahead and achieve your financial goals in life.
Rule # 2: Monitor
You will ensure that all your financial accounts are linked with MoneyPatrol. The product can give you an accurate view of your finances only if all your accounts are linked and syncing successfully. We have specifically created a solution that has multiple backup data aggregation gateways which sync with financial institutions and enable us to download data from backup data gateways when the primary gateways fail. What this means is that you should link your financial accounts from multiple gateways that we provide so that when the main data gateway fails to sync, data will be downloaded via the backup gateways. This ensures data redundancy and helps avoid missing data or syncing issues with accounts.
Rule # 3: Dedication
You will review all transactions and read all messages that MoneyPatrol shares and notifies you about. Staying on top of finances is not easy, this needs daily checking the pulse of your money and your financial accounts. Our system is designed to alert you about new expenses, payments, income, transfers, etc. All we need you to do is log-in to the MoneyPatrol product, check the new transactions, and then review and accept them into the system. While doing so, spend a few seconds to clean the merchant’s name, update the categories, add in the memo section the reason about the transaction, and if it was an expense transaction, mark whether it was an essential or a nonessential expense. Ensure that you are creating targets for each month and try your best to staying within the spend targets while excessing the savings targets.
Rule # 4: Action
If MoneyPatrol has shared any message with you via text, email or a notification, you will pay attention to it and act on it if required. Our system is designed to send you alerts and notifications about transactions that have happened, or which will happen in the near future including bill payments and credit usage alerts. Pay attention to these messages, open them and read them. While sometimes it may feel that we send too many messages, you can easily manage the volume of these from the Alert Settings section. However, you should enable receiving all these alerts as this is the most reliable way to ensure you are being aware and are on top of your money and finances. It takes only a few seconds to read these.
Rule # 5: Growth
You will pay close attention to the things that compose your net worth and how that composition impacts your net worth positively as well as negatively. One of our goals is that by helping you stay on top of your finances, you will be able to decrease your spending, reduce your debts and in turn increase your savings and cash holdings. With the improvements in your finances, you should then focus on investing more of your money into equity markets, CDs, high interest yielding accounts, and similar investments which have the potential to grow over time and thus increasing your net worth. A person’s financial journey is a life-long journey, and even if you are able to consistently improve your savings rate every month and invest those savings into S&P 500, there is high probability that over time with the effect of compounding, the value of your money will be much higher in the future than it is today. Of course, we are discounting the long-term impact if inflation, but regardless of that the more you save today and consistently invest, you will likely have more money at your disposal in the future.
Rule # 6: Support
While we have a FREE plan and we want our users to use the free version of the product, if you like what we are doing, have felt the positive impact of our product, then you will support us by becoming a paid user of our product. We want our product to be around for a very long time so that we can serve you and users such as you, but unless we generate meaningful revenue, it will be difficult for us to survive and stay around. Our product is priced in 3 different tiers and all the three tiers are very affordable. If you are someone who eats out, goes out for movies or musical events, spends money on alcohol, has subscription to Spotify, Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Cable TV or any such entertainment options, then you can certainly afford to buy an annual subscription to a product such as ours that is designed to help you stay on top of your money and personal finances. Stop being a miser and start supporting a product which can actually have a real positive impact on your life.