Clariity Website Review: Family Finances Made Easy

The world is such a busy place these days, and it can often seem like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that we need to.  With all the busyness of life, it can be easy to let a lot of important financial tasks just remain undone, simply because we feel we don’t have the time.

Among those things that people often don’t do are saving for retirement, saving for their children’s education, creating a will, and setting up an emergency fund.

A couple of months ago a blogging friend of mine brought to my attention a new website that aims to empower families to help them to make decisions about family and finances, and bring it all together in one place to make it easy to execute.  Today I thought I’d do a quick review of the family and financial website called Clariity.com

Company History

From the Clariity website:

The story of Clariity began 37 years ago with a boy in a bucolic rural town growing up in an impoverished, single-parent home. The boy often wondered what it would be like to have a close-knit family and to be free from the daily stress of trying to make ends meet. Through God’s grace and blessings, this boy grew up and started a family of his own. He vowed to start a new legacy of family unity based on a strong spiritual and financial foundation.  Clariity was founded with the mission of empowering families to make informed decisions about life and family finances as they journey through their greatest adventures together.

“Clariity is the convergence of three things that I cherish most in life — my family, my spiritual walk and equipping families to manage their finances.”  Scott Amyx  Co-Founder & CEO

So the website is all about things I find very important as well, family and finances!

Signing Up For Clariity

Signing up for Clariity was extremely simple, and is free of charge. The site makes their money through advertising and premium memberships, but most people can get the most out of the free service.

To sign up you just go to their homepage, click on “sign up” and then it will ask you for some extremely basic information including email, password and zip code.  (Later on you can enter more information to further personalize the service, things like age, gender, marriage status, kids and so forth.)

Once you sign up you’ll receive an email confirming that your account has been created, and you’re set to go!

What Does Clariity Do?

Clariity is essentially a clearing house for family financial issues, and an online family financial planning site. Anything a family may need to do in their financial life, Clariity wants you to be able to do through them.  Opening a 529 education savings account, creating a will, setting home purchase savings goals and more.  They can also request others to give to their family savings goals, and give Clariity gift cards to others to help them reach their goals.

The site has only recently launched, but currently there are a few main things you can do at their site.

Give Meaningful Gifts Via Clariity Gift Cards

One of the main things you can now do through Clariity is to give and receive financial gifts to go towards certain savings goals -  through Clariity gift cards.  So say say you know someone who just had a baby. You can give  them the gift of a Clariity gift card to go towards the child’s college education.  Or you know someone is saving for a house and you want to pitch in. Just give them a Clariity gift card which can be used towards their savings goal.  You can also give just a generic Clariity gift card to be used for the goal of the recipients choice.

Once a gift card is received, t herecipient can then link up their existing savings account or education savings account on Clariity, and the money will go right into the account.  If they don’t have one they can sign up for one through Clariity.  Coming soon?  Group gifting, so a group of family or friends can give towards one goal.

Setting Goals And Planning Ahead

Currently when you sign up for Clariity you can do a number of things including setting goals for a home purchase, vacation, wedding, college savings, car purchase or other miscellaneous savings goal.  You can also put in place the first steps of estate planning, including creating a will.  To do all that you’ll go to their easy to use “goals map” shown below.

Once on the map, there are a variety of things you can do.

Setting Up A 529 College Savings Plan

Choosing a 529 college savings plan on Clariity is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

When you start the process you just select how long you have to save, and how much you want to save every month.  It will then take you to a page with 529 ESA accounts available for your state.  Of course residents aren’t limited to investing in their own State’s plan. Another state may offer a plan that performs better and has lower fees. If there is no tax break offered for in-state investors you can also choose from plans from other states and sort through them by total expense ratio, enrollment fees, user ratings, plan name.  When I checked my state plan – in Minnesota, there were some advantages to that plan for Minnesota residents, so it’s a good idea to check.

Once you figure out which one meets your needs, you just complete an online questionnaire, Clariity will mail you a completed and verified application, which you can then sign, enclose a check and send in to your new 529 institution to open your account. They will then open your account and confirm it with you.

Savings Goals

Beyond college savings, you can also set up a variety of other savings goals within Clariity.  Anything from a home or auto purchase to a vacation or a wedding savings goal.  Each goal calculator will have you select how much you want to save, how long you have to save, and how much you want to save every month.  Then it will give you some options of where to save your money.  You can either link an existing account, or they’ll also give you a list of savings account options as well.

Estate Planning

One thing that you can do on Clariity that I’ve been putting off is creating a will.

Doing the will is a simple step by step process, after which you can print your will, get it notarized – and file it with your county records clerk.  The site will ask you for your testators (person who is making the will), your estate’s executors, names and DOB for your children, guardians for any minors, bequests you’d like to make, property you’re leaving, additional powers and provisions (like cremation vs. burial, etc) and a section for a living will.  It seems to be pretty thorough, and I think it should be fine for most simple situations. More complicated situations should probably still seek an attorney’s advice, and the site offers to set you up for a free consultation with an estate planning attorney at the end, in case you’re interested.

Talking With Scott Amyx, CEO And Co-Founder Of Clariity

I caught up with Scott Amyx, CEO and co-founder of Clariity over at Facebook and he explained to me a bit about the idea behind Clariity, and what tools and functionality they hope to be add in the near future.

Why did you set out to create Clariity?

In my career, building some of the largest direct-to-consumer advice platforms in the financial services industry, I’ve noticed a common recurring theme – families were not financially prepared. Many are mired in debt. Many do not have college savings. For young people that do graduate, they carry some $24K in student loan debt. The average 50 year old has $2,500 in retirement assets. 2/3 of retirees depend on Society Security, family or charity.

I wanted to create a business that would put families first and to equip them to build a brighter, stronger future.

I like the idea behind Clariity, and how you’re looking to help families improve their finances.  With that said, I’m sure you’re planning on making a good thing better. What other features and functionality can we expect from Clariity in the future?

We will be pursuing a multi-path platform with iOS and Android apps for iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones.  We’ll also continue to extend out the holistic financial planning platform on Clariity with its integrated comprehensive cashflow algorithm by adding Survivor Needs Analysis, Disability Income Needs Analysis, Long Term Care Insurance,  Advanced Estate Planning with A/B Trust & gross & taxable estate projections on 1st & 2nd-to-die scenarios.

As we roll out a functional category, we will simultaneously strengthen our Financial Product Marketplace where we envision an Amazon-like market where consumers can truly shop for the best financial products, have access to product transparency, fees, performance, features and user reviews.

Thanks to Scott for taking some time out to explain some of the reasoning behind why he helped found the site, and what we can look forward to in the future. I know I’m looking forward to having an “Amazon-like market” for financial products, I think in some respects that’s something that’s truly lacking currently.    I also look forward to checking out some of the investing and retirement content that they plan on adding soon.

Conclusion

The idea behind Clariity is to become a one stop shop for families trying to make sound financial decisions about education, wills, savings, and more – and to allow their friends and family to help contribute towards those goals.

While the site has just re-launched, and the options on the site are still a work in progress,  it definitely has a lot of  promise.  Their tools for setting up a 529 education savings account, and for creating a will are easy and straight forward.  The savings goals options will aid families in putting together a plan.

I am going to give the site a thumbs up, with the idea that they’ll be continuing to improve the site.  Some things I’d like to see in the near future include better instructions on some of the pages and more options for helping families to plan out certain financial situations in their lives, beyond savings goals and wills (like investing and retirement).    From talking with the CEO all of that will be coming down the road sometime in the near future – and I look forward to it.    All in all, Clariity is a solid site with a lot of useful tools, and I recommend checking it out.

Tagged as: review, Website

Last Edited: 17th March 2011

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