Gerald R Wagners Blog

Many things have happened since the first posting. My apologies for the long lapse of time. For one thing the Green Pig Corporation has been formed as a New Mexico nonprofit. My love for New Mexico still exists and maybe someday I can live there again.

The software mock up screens were done during the summer while not at UNO. In 30 plus years of software development the graphic design is the most beautiful I’ve worked with. It is really gorgeous.

As might be expected the software’s primary strengths are visual planning and ease of use. That’s to be expected since that has been my career for 30 years. As might also be expected, a lot of the software looks similar to software tools that I’ve developed in the past.

In collaboration with United Way I am teaching financial literacy classes for 10 low income families served by Camp Fire USA in Omaha (pro bono of course). The goal at Camp Fire is to demonstrate that financial literacy education can modify financial management behavior and improve human well-being.

The class started 2 weeks ago and we have 7 more weeks to go. Classes are from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays.

The computer software part of the Camp Fire class is for capturing data for past expenses and then budgeting or forecasting future expenses. I am using free Internet software called Expenseview. The hardest part of the class for students is keeping receipts for all expenses. That is something that most people just don’t do very well but it is fundamental to good personal financial planning.

Budgeting is still a taboo word. Eventually when I have the Green Pig I think its use for budgeting can be fun. It is highly interactive, visual, and game like. Those words will ring up memories of my previous Planners Lab software. The game with personal financial management is to “juggle” expenses so that leftover each month is above the zero line.

Boot strap development of the Green Pig with no funding is slow but it will eventually be used for the Camp Fire classes. I am 90% at the University so that leaves 10% of my time, my one free day per week for consulting, and weekends and nights for working on the software.

The next blog input will deal with my research ideas related to reducing stress with better personal financial management. A CNN poll today (October 1,2009) asked the question “Of these, what gives you the most stress?”. The results were Family at 19%, Health at 9%, State of the World at 21%, and Money at 51%. Research shows that 75% of diagnosed illnesses are related to stress. Do the arithmetic and the potential is huge for improving quality of life by reducing “money stress”.

This disaster should mean vast opportunities for useful research. At least that’s my hope.

This old guy who is quite well known as one of the founders of complex Decision Support Systems, Collaborative Decision Systems, Judgment Modeling, and the designer and developer of corporate planning systems is now designing the “Green Pig” budgeting software for consumers. All my life my passion has been to make software easy and intuitive to use. The new Green Pig™ is the ultimate of simplicity as it needs to be useable with no training for what I call the “Wal Mart” traffic. Please don’t take offense. I go to Wal Mart too.

My first major venture into software entrepreneurship was with Execucom Systems Corporation and its financial modeling package called the IFPS (Interactive Financial Planning System). IFPS was a sophisticated modeling language that used plain English to describe assumptions. It was the dominant corporate financial planning system from about 1980 until about 1986. Most Fortune 1000 companies and many major academic institutions depended on the software. I left in 1984 after the company was sold to GTE.

About 5 years ago I had the idea for what became the Planners Lab™ software. Nothing like the old IFPS product existed anymore even though it has legions of advocates with fond memories. In some sense the Planners Lab became a reincarnation of IFPS. But now the software has a fancy Flash front end for asking What If questions and seeing animated changes in goal variables. I give the software to academic institutions for free. I’ve also created an applied consulting course for Universities to use along with the software. If you want to see more about my past and what I’ve been doing take a look at geraldrwagner.com. If you want to learn more about the Planners Lab take a look at www.grwstudios.com or www.plannerslab.com.

Now back to the Green Pig. This new software builds upon IFPS and Planners Lab. Mostly due to the economic problems there has been a flood of interest in personal budgeting. The startup company mint.com has a personal budgeting product that just celebrated their one million’th subscriber and is growing at 3000 more a day. Such fast growth in terms of numbers has never happened before. It is a beautiful piece of software. It and the 6 or more new software products are for seeing where you spent your money in the past. But they are weak on how to spend your money in the future, i.e., thinking about and plan how to spend your money before you spend it. How to spend your money in the future means budgeting and budgeting is a very close cousin to financial simulation which was the niche for IFPS and the Planners Lab. So now you see the connections.

So, I saw a void of available software for consumers to plan how to spend their money in the future.

Everybody knows about piggy banks. Piggy banks are a place for putting coins that hopefully will build up savings. The goal of personal budgeting is to spend less than you are bringing in, i.e., build up savings. So it seemed that a piggy bank is a natural icon for savings. Green usually means good or positive. So, it occurred to me that the perfect product name for a personal budgeting product would be Green Pig.

Future blog postings will be more or less a personal Green Pig diary focusing on research progress pertaining to financial literacy education.