SmartAsset, a startup incubated by Y Combinator, aims to help consumers make the major financial decisions in their lives.
Right now, the site is focused on homebuying — founder and CEO Michael Carvin tells me the service originated in his own experience purchasing a home. When he was trying to figure out whether buying made sense, he found that online resources were pretty lacking, with lots of advice in the form of blog posts (“Content can be helpful, but me reading about your aunt buying a home or your cousin buying a home doesn’t really help me,” Carvin says) plus financial calculators with little depth and dubious accuracy. So instead, Carvin built his own financial model to figure out how the purchase would affect his finances over time, and he realized that as long as he stayed int he home for at least a few years, buying was good move.
