Life is tricky; your finances shouldn’t be

For almost every financial issue that I have, there is a service I can count on to address my needs.

The bank is a great vault, I know my money is safe and I can expect it to be there.

If I want to take a mortgage from one bank because the rate is better but keep my day-to-day somewhere else, no problem, the choice, and selection are there.

WealthSimple makes investing easy — I can easily trade stocks or just let them manage.

If I need to spin up a prepaid card to spend money, KOHO or STACK is my go-to.

If I want great credit card perks that my bank doesn’t provide Neo is there for me.

If I want to manage my crypto portfolio and use it, CoinBase, Crypto.com, Trust Wallet have my back.

If I want to buy a car online and finance it at the same time, no worries, Canada Drives has made the process simple.

If my credit score dips and my bank won’t lend to me, there is a long list of near-prime and subprime lenders such as Lendful, goEasy, Fairstone.

And if I need a loan to help settle an item in collections, Progressa is there for that.

But, when it comes to tracking and keeping tabs on all of this, I don’t have a service to turn to. Instead, I have to manage several logins that I must separately access in order to find out what I have and where I have it at. Occasionally, I might find some extra time in my day to transfer the information into excel and manually manage my financial life but those days are rare. What I would find helpful would be to have a combined Financial Dashboard, a simple “Heads-up” display of what I have, where I have it with pertinent updates clearly displayed.

But better yet, what if this Heads Up display contained relevant and actionable information based on my personal and oftentimes semi-unique financial situation? What if I was presented with thoughtful recommendations surrounding my finances just like a personal-money manager or CFO provides for high-net-worth people AKA the 1%? What if this information enabled me to optimize my money by saving more, spending less frivolously, and ultimately focussing on what’s important to me?

In recent years, many new and established companies have increased their educational efforts in order to answer those questions. But while having a strong, basic understanding is important, I believe that software provides the best way to cut through financial confusion and needless complexity. Software is very, very good at distilling the key points we need to make decisions, and in some cases, can even make those decisions for us.

For many people, the financial services industry is intimidatingly complex. Sure, we’d all be better off if we understood its intricacies, but most of us are preoccupied with financial questions like, can we refinance our credit card debt, student loans, auto loans, or mortgages, and which should we prioritize? Could we save more? What should we think about investing in?

As an example, let’s take a subset of the intelligent recommendations, such as debt repayment schedules, that help people understand and maximize principal repayment inclusive of all outstanding debt across mortgage, auto, personal, and credit card, HELOC, etc.

People don’t know what order to pay in, where to prepay, how much to revolve on their credit card, or how to think about consolidation. People are forced to log in to each service provider’s portal, then must initiate a bank ACH (or mail a check!) to pay each of these loans separately. Higher-income individuals may be able to put it on autopay, but even then, they may not be optimizing their cash flow relative to new refinance opportunities and changing rates, or new provincial/federal programs. What’s missing is the automation of the physical act of repayment. Wouldn’t it be great to put all those various monthly payments on some sort of intelligent set-and-forget while also providing someone with the ability to assess the impact of a new loan relative to their existing debt?

Billi is on a mission to become the operating system of personal money management. And like an operating system, Billi will become the connective tissue between these sometimes competing needs, and will automatically monitor and adjust your financial roadmap over the course of your lifetime. At a glance, we want you to know exactly where you stand so you can more easily reach your financial destinations.

We are new, we are driven and we are just getting started.

You can follow our public road map and we invite you to reach out at any time to share feedback or discuss ideas.

We invite you to link arms with us as we build this intelligence layer together. We all want to become more mindful of where our money is going and together, we can reach the destination we desire while enjoying the journey along the way.