The Boulevard to Financial Independence

There are many ways to start a company.

The great thing about doing a financial services startup is that you learn so much more about personal finance and best practices.  Boulevard R has been very fortuante to have a couple of great independent financial advisors informing the calculation process.  Another benefit is that through interacting with users and researching the pain in planning for retirement, you get a much better understanding of the issues consumers find challenging and where they would like assistance.

The personal downside of doing a personal finance startup (at least a downside based on how we’re funding the venture) is that now I understand the real opportunity cost of my lost income, since we’re paying ourselves so little.   Since my background is in consumer rights, not personal finance, many of the retirement planning issues we’re addressing are relatively new to me (fortunately we have a great team to create the backend financial model and run tests on them to verify their accuracy).  Saving for retirement and the impact of different financial decisions can be quite complex, but from a calculation standpoint, I’ve really come to appreciate the value of the fundamentals, like how you want to front-load the planning effort when you’re younger to make best use of compound interest.

I wish I could both salt some money away for retirement, as well as make sure Boulevard R stays alive, but right now it’s one or the other.  I guess the success of Boulevard R is my retirement plan.

So instead of having a secure job that pays well and is mildly interesting, I get to do something that I know will ultimately help millions of Americans and address the most pressing personal financial issue of our time.  Low pay and no benefits aren’t a bad trade-off for creative license and getting to do something you’re passionate about.

I’d be really interested in finding out how the startup and small business community perceive the sacrifices they have to make when starting a venture.

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