We have launched our new comparison tool and it’s free

Before working for Hardbacon, I had no idea about the amount of work involved in doing “features” on the web or on the app. I wasn’t working for Hardbacon when the app was initially developed, but I’ve seen the development of financial product comparators (we have a credit card, robo-advisor, online broker and more comparison tools on our website).

In all, we’ve put in 782 hours of work to develop these free tools. It doesn’t sound like much, but if I do the math for you, it’s the equivalent of doing a Stars Wars marathon 35 times. Still not convinced? Developing our comparators took us the same amount of time as flying around the world 15 times. (I admit, I Googled this).

In short, not only is it a lot of time, but it is a lot of effort as well. I must also admit that I was not at all convinced about the benefit of developing comparators, especially when I saw all the work involved.

When these tools were finished, it took us a long time to try and find all the bugs that we could. I told myself that since I had to navigate through comparators, I might as well play the game. So I actually entered my criteria in order to find financial products that best suited me.

And then…it hit me… I learned that I was paying $420 too much in fees with my online broker compared to one that provided the same services, but was less expensive.

With the credit card compare tool, I learned that my credit card actually DID NOT have an advantageous reward program over others with the same features. Let’s say that the work I put into finding out if there were any bugs in the comparators paid off very well. Of course, you won’t get paid for using comparators, but I encourage you to go through the exercise. I’m curious to find out about the savings you might discover.