The Great Recession came about, in part, due to consumers’ eyes being larger than our stomachs.  We wanted instant gratification, and it was available in spades.  The instant gratification paradigm is in tension with that of delayed gratification.  Delaying gratification requires frugality and planning.  That planning is the process of creating future goals and creating the means to achieve them.  Goal setting appears a lost art.  It’s not sexy, not fun.  But it cannot afford to remain an idle past-time where we can laugh off yet another wasted gym membership after our New Year’s resolution faded in the early Spring.  Consumer financial goal setting is a matter of macro-economic significance, with implications on the GDP order of magnitude.

Fortunately, smart people are building tools to help us revive this dying art – and none too early: consumer debt in the US is at nearly $1 trillion, savings rates are super low (although they appear artificially high largely due to less credit availability), and retirement savings participation is dangerously low.  Today, we at Core Innovation Capital are announcing an investment in one of those companies: GoalSpring Financial.  GoalSpring does business under the name DebtGoal, which explains their product.  They’re the best Do It Yourself solution we have found for all of us who have too much debt, feel stuck and believe there must be a better way than defaulting or making minimum payments.  DebtGoal’s goal is simple: eliminate debt, and it offers a number of dynamic tools to help us reduce it as quickly as possible, paying the banks as little interest as possible.  They’ll help us figure out who to pay first, how to renegotiate our interest rates and how to stay on track when you skip a beat.

Of course DebtGoal is not the only company in this genre. Mint has a beautiful goal setting implementation.  Stickk helps increase the cost of not realizing your goals.  While most of these systems still have a ways to go, we’d love to see an effective equivalent called WealthGoal.  Keep making those payments after your debt is gone – building your own savings instead of paying the bank.  Very not sexy.  Very important.  Who can do this?