About us
I've been passionate about personal finance for as long as I can remember - whether it was in 4th grade asking my mom how to do taxes, or feeling frustrated at age 11 that my savings account at Washington Mutual wasn't earning interest. You could say I've had money on my mind for some time now!
These days, I run my investment advisory firm (go figure lol) alongside a few other entrepreneurial endeavors. Before any of those came about, though, I was simply a student studying Finance at Texas A&M University - working on this budget. Enter Eric's genius, plus a decade of iterations, and we have what today we call BudgetForLife. As my first passion project, BudgetForLife is truly a dream come to life, and I can only hope you find it to be as enjoyable and useful as I have. Blessings on your financial journey, Jeremy Biar |
I hope you find BudgetForLife to be a straightforward tool as you steward your finances. Eric Hopper |
How BudgetForLife Came To Be
It's hard to tell the story of BudgetForLife without going back to when we first met as freshmen in high school. Eric was taking calculus (yes, as freshman), and I (Jeremy) was filling my time researching stocks and listening to Dave Ramsey. However, even we ambitious high schoolers needed an outlet of rest and recreation. For us, that was playing disc golf. It wasn't long though before one of us had the idea: "What if we made a spreadsheet to track our scores over time? We'll be able to tell which holes are our best and worst, know the stroke difference between the beginner and advanced tees, and see how quickly we improve!" I guess you could say our definition of recreation is a little odd, because we were ecstatic.
We accumulated data from over 100 rounds of disc golf. It was a glorious time. But as we moved onto college, we were ready for a new challenge. We talked about building a spreadsheet more complex and much more useful: a budget system. So again, we went to work. And again, we recognized that our version of "fun" is, um, interesting, to say the least ... Much has happened since we first started working on this budget: we've moved cities (a couple times), earned degrees, and married up - serving as groomsmen in each others' weddings. Still, I'm not sure if we've changed more over the years or if BudgetForLife has. Just be thankful you aren't using the original version of BFL! :D
We've all heard it said that "time flies when you're having fun," and that's certainly been our experience making this software. There's something special about a beautiful, informative spreadsheet; we think it's an underappreciated joy of this life, and we're happy to share ours with you :). So, while we wish we could wow you with a long list of personal accomplishments, we're really just two normal guys. Or, mostly normal.
We accumulated data from over 100 rounds of disc golf. It was a glorious time. But as we moved onto college, we were ready for a new challenge. We talked about building a spreadsheet more complex and much more useful: a budget system. So again, we went to work. And again, we recognized that our version of "fun" is, um, interesting, to say the least ... Much has happened since we first started working on this budget: we've moved cities (a couple times), earned degrees, and married up - serving as groomsmen in each others' weddings. Still, I'm not sure if we've changed more over the years or if BudgetForLife has. Just be thankful you aren't using the original version of BFL! :D
We've all heard it said that "time flies when you're having fun," and that's certainly been our experience making this software. There's something special about a beautiful, informative spreadsheet; we think it's an underappreciated joy of this life, and we're happy to share ours with you :). So, while we wish we could wow you with a long list of personal accomplishments, we're really just two normal guys. Or, mostly normal.