Money
Issue No. 40 - April/ /
Budget gadget the right choice
by Pamela Brombal
With temptation to spend everywhere you turn, saving can be difficult. Even in boom times personal finance is a headache.
Some time ago husband and wife duo, Wayne and Julie Ringrow faced this familiar challenge and when Julie wanted a budgeting device to record her purchases at the point of sale, she found that was the one thing she couldn’t buy.
“I wanted something I could put in my wallet and use doing the shopping and budgeting for the family,” Julie says.
“I was frustrated there wasn’t a product out there you could use on the run. All of the budgeting products were either paper or software-based.”
In 2001 the couple invested in developing a budgeting device small enough to fit into a wallet and use at point-of-purchase. After three years of development and contract negotiations with manufacturers in China, the first 10,000 Spendtracker units came off the line in 2004.
At the same time Julie was diagnosed with breast cancer and the business took a back seat. The family relocated from Sydney to Adelaide for family support. Spendtracker development took place quietly in the background.
Then media attention, word of mouth and a Channel 9 national A Current Affair story hailed Spendtracker as the household’s hand-held, credit card size budgeting product. Financial planners also took up the novelty for client gifts.
“We did not recover our initial outlay costs of more than $100,000 in the first product run, but we couldn’t give up as we really believed in the potential of the product,” says Wayne.
“I did a lot of research on credit card debt and found that 40% of our target market would carry over $500 each month and pay interest on it.
“I pitched the idea to financial institutions but I found it wasn’t in their interest to support a product like ours. They seemed happy with their customers paying interest.”
One financial institution did see the benefit of Spendt...
