Growth: 8% per year. Method: bottom-up from (annual decision-cohort x $39 kit price), cross-checked against the personal-finance-software market. Trigger cohort: US recorded ~3.6M births/yr (2023) plus relocations and voluntary quit-to-stay-home moves; conservatively ~2,000,000 US two-income parents/yr seriously weigh dropping to one income within 3-6 months. TAM = 2,000,000 x $39 = $78M/yr if every willing buyer bought once. SAM: only the slice reachable through organic Instagram/TikTok plus email who actually buy digital finance products, estimated ~15% of the cohort = 300,000 x $39 = ~$12M/yr. SOM (year 1-2 for one founder, 10 hrs/week, cold start with no following, $90 build cost): realistically ~400 kit buyers at $39 (~$15,600) plus ~$2,400 from $9 quarterly refreshes and affiliate payouts, totaling ~$18K over the first two years (~$9K/yr run-rate). This deliberately assumes only single-digit list-to-sale conversion because, per the idea's own main risk, cold short-form email capture without a following is the binding constraint. For context, IMARC pegs the global personal-finance-software market at $1.3B (2024); this info-product niche is a sliver of that plus the Etsy/Gumroad template economy.

Differentiation: This founder wins on channel and timing, not product novelty. Her social-media skill lets her produce the decision-moment short-form ('the number that told us I could quit') that free SEO calculators and passive Etsy sellers never make, and her planning skill plus lived family-budgeting experience makes the $39 kit's sinking-funds tracker for lumpy irregular costs genuinely better than a generic monthly template. Unlike Etsy/Gumroad one-off sellers, she captures the email at the free-calculator moment and owns a nurtured list she can re-sell $9 refreshes and seasonal drops to, all built async in evenings within 10 hrs/week and a $90 build well under the $500 budget, with the first paid sale realistic by ~week 6.

Competitors

Customer segments

• Maternity-leave-ending moms: Moms whose ~12-week leave ends in 1-3 months, actively agonizing on Instagram/TikTok over whether to return; highest-intent, time-boxed buyer.
• Voluntary quit-to-stay-home planners: Two-income couples deciding within 3-6 months whether one parent can quit, needing a runway number before committing.
• Relocating single-earner families: Dual-income families moving for a job where one spouse will pause their career and must re-model the household budget.
• Expecting first-time parents: Couples pre-baby stress-testing whether they could live on one income once childcare and leave math hit.

Sources

• Personal Finance Software Market Size and Report [2033] - IMARC Group: https://www.imarcgroup.com/personal-finance-software-market
• Personal Finance Software Market Size, Share & Growth Report by 2034 - Fortune Business Insights: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/personal-finance-software-market-112683
• Personal Finance Software Market - Technavio: https://www.technavio.com/report/personal-finance-software-market-industry-analysis
• Stay at Home Calculator: Can You Afford to Stay Home? - Frugal Mama Project: https://frugalmamaproject.com/stay-at-home-calculator/
• Stay at Home Mom Calculator: 3 Survival Numbers You Need to Know - GrowingSlower: https://growingslower.com/stay-at-home-mom-calculator/
• Digital Budget Planner (Google Sheets) - The Savvy Mama Shop: https://shop.thesavvymama.com/products/digital-budget-planner

The people who pay are parents 2-4 months from a fixed decision date (maternity leave ending, a quit, a relocation) who are scared they can't afford one income and will pay $39 for a concrete number and plan right now, not someday.

Messaging angle: Your maternity leave ends soon: get the one number that tells you if you can afford to stay home, before HR needs your answer.

Pricing logic: Etsy and Gumroad budget templates sell for $8-30 as one-off, un-targeted files; YNAB charges ~$109/yr for ongoing software overkill. At $39 the Transition Kit sits above commodity templates because it is a full decision-moment system (workbook + sinking-funds tracker + email mini-course) sold to a high-intent, time-boxed buyer, not a flat-shelf browser. The first launch batch is offered at a $29 founder price to reward early subscribers and gather testimonials, then settles to $39. This is still far below a single financial-advisor consult, so it reads as a no-brainer for someone weighing a $30k+ income change.

Funding: With a $90 startup cost, do not borrow or raise anything: fund it entirely from your $500 budget and treat the first launch as self-funding. This is the textbook bootstrap case where any external money would cost more in time and obligation than it returns.

• Personal savings (staged): Spend only ~$45 up front (domain + Carrd + one month of Canva) to build the free calculator and test Reels; hold the other ~$45 until email capture is proven. Covers 100% of the $90. Catch: discipline to not buy tools before the funnel converts.
• Revenue-first bootstrapping: The $585 month-2 launch (15 buyers, some at the $29 founder price) covers the full startup cost plus fixed costs in a single month, then funds all future Canva/tooling. Catch: month 1 earns $0, so you carry ~$108 of cost before any revenue arrives.
• Founder-price pre-sales: Offer the $29 founder price to your first 300-500 subscribers before the kit is finished; even 10 pre-sales ($290) more than repays startup cost and validates demand. Catch: you must deliver within days of taking money, so only pre-sell once the workbook is ~80% done.

Assumptions

• Organic short-form (Reels/TikTok) is the only acquisition channel; cash CAC stays near $0 and the ~$14 test ad spend is one-time, not a scaling lever.
• At least one calculator-promoting Reel reliably converts viewers to email opt-ins at a 15-25% landing-page rate before the paid kit is built (the mainRisk gate).
• The email list reaches roughly 300-500 subscribers by the week-6 launch, and the 4-email nurture sequence converts 3-5% of subscribers to buyers.
• Product is fully digital (Google Sheets + PDF workbook + email mini-course), so there is zero per-unit fulfillment time and margin holds at ~90% after Gumroad/Stripe fees.
• 10 hours/week covers content creation, scheduling, and email writing; delivery is automated, so buyer volume is capped by audience size, not by the user's hours.

You run OneIncome Runway async in evenings: batch short-form video on weekends, let a free calculator capture emails on autopilot, and a 4-email nurture sequence sells the $39 kit while you sleep. Once live, the weekly rhythm is film-and-schedule content, reply to comments/DMs, and tweak the funnel based on signup and conversion numbers.

Tool stack

Delivery workflow

1. Discover: Parent sees a Reel/TikTok in the decision-moment voice and taps the link in bio to the calculator landing page.
2. Opt-in: They enter their email in the MailerLite form to unlock the free Google Sheets calculator (auto-copy link delivered instantly).
3. Nurture: MailerLite fires a 4-email sequence over 7 days: runway story, the lumpy-cost trap, a mini-win, then the kit offer.
4. Purchase: They buy the $39 kit through the Lemon Squeezy checkout linked in email 4; card and PayPal accepted, tax handled automatically.
5. Deliver: Lemon Squeezy instantly emails the download: transition workbook, sinking-funds tracker, and mini-course access. Zero manual work per sale.
6. Retain: Buyers get tagged for the later $9 quarterly refresh drop, lifting lifetime value with one email per quarter.

Suppliers

Weekly time budget

• Content: batch-film and schedule 5 Reels/TikToks: 4h/week
• Marketing: reply to comments/DMs, engage in parenting communities: 2h/week
• Product: build then iterate the kit and calculator: 2h/week
• Admin: review signup and conversion metrics, tweak nurture emails: 2h/week

10 hours/week caps you at roughly 5 quality videos weekly, which is the real ceiling on email capture and therefore sales; the funnel itself scales to unlimited buyers since delivery is fully automated. First thing to outsource when you hit the wall: video editing (hire a CapCut editor on Fiverr at ~$15/clip) so your hours shift to hooks and offers, not timeline scrubbing.

Positioning: For two-income parents weighing a drop to one paycheck in the next 3-6 months, OneIncome Runway is the transition planner that models your real runway number in an evening, unlike generic budget templates that ignore the lumpy costs that actually sink one-income households.

Name options

• OneIncome Runway
• Solo Salary Plan
• Runway to One
• The Quit Math
• Single-Income Ready

Palette & voice

Logo concept (OR): Lowercase 'or' where the 'o' is a small upward-arcing runway line (a plane-takeoff curve) rising into the 'r', set in a rounded geometric sans in deep teal (#0f766e). The arc doubles as a rising-money trajectory. Works as a standalone circular arc-and-dot favicon.

Hypothesis: At least 1 in 15 people who watch a transition-decision Reel to the end will hand over their email to download the free 'Can We Afford One Income?' calculator, proving cold short-form content converts strangers into a list at a rate worth building a paid kit on. (budget $9)

Interview questions

1. Walk me through the last time you and your partner talked about one of you leaving work: what triggered that conversation?
2. What did you actually do to figure out whether you could afford it: spreadsheet, app, notes, nothing?
3. Where did you get stuck or give up when trying to work out the numbers?
4. What surprise costs hit families you know who dropped to one income?
5. When you searched online about this, what did you type, and what was missing from what you found?
6. Who or what have you already paid for or downloaded to help with this decision, and did it help?
7. How far away is your decision deadline, and what happens on that date?
8. The last time you almost decided but delayed, what specifically made you hold off?

Success criteria

• At least one Reel captures emails at 7%+ of viewers who reach the landing page, across 200+ visitors.
• 50+ emails on the list by Day 12 from organic plus the small boost.
• 3 or more paid $29 pre-orders from the first list of 50, i.e. a 6%+ list-to-sale rate.
• In interviews, 3 of 4 parents describe a concrete deadline within 6 months and a failed attempt to model the numbers themselves.

Kill criteria

• Landing-page signup rate stays under 3% after 200+ visitors and 5 posted videos, meaning cold content cannot feed the funnel.
• Zero paid $29 pre-orders from a list of 40+ opted-in, high-intent emails after the nurture email.
• Interviews reveal parents make this call on gut/one late-night chat and won't pay for a tool, i.e. no felt need worth $29.

Capture parents at the one-income decision moment with a free 'Can We Afford One Income?' calculator, fed by organic short-form video and evergreen Pinterest search, then convert the email list to the $39 Transition Kit via a nurture sequence.

Path to 100: Weeks 1-2: stand up the Google Sheets calculator behind a MailerLite opt-in and a simple landing page (total build under the $90 startup cost via domain plus Canva Pro), then start posting 5 Reels/week and 10 Pinterest pins to prove the free calculator captures emails. Weeks 3-5: keep the short-form and Pinterest cadence running while seeding value in Reddit and Facebook threads, aiming for a reliable cost per email near $0 and a list of 300-600 subscribers. Week 6 (first revenue): launch the $39 kit through the 4-email nurture sequence to that list, expecting the first 10-15 sales. Months 2-3: double down on the Reels hooks that convert, let Pinterest pins compound, and switch on the $5-10/day paid test to amplify winners, realistically reaching about 40 buyers by month 3 and the first 100 by roughly month 5-6, with the seasonal $9 refresh lifting lifetime value once the base is built.

Entity: Start as a sole proprietorship (US). Assume US federal/state defaults; check your state.. OneIncome Runway sells a $39 digital kit and free calculator, near-zero physical risk, one person, revenue starting small. A sole proprietorship costs nothing to form and is taxed identically to a single-member LLC, so an LLC gives no tax benefit here. Your real exposure is a parent claiming your calculator or advice led to a bad financial decision, and an entity does NOT shield you from claims arising from your own content and advice: insurance and clear disclaimers are your primary protection, the entity is a secondary layer for business debts and vendor contracts. Upgrade when: Form a single-member LLC when (1) you sell under a brand name and want to avoid a public DBA filing that lists your home name and address in most states (an LLC with a registered agent service avoids this), (2) revenue passes roughly $2,000-3,000/month and you sign real vendor or affiliate contracts, or (3) you take on a co-founder. Stay in your home state; Delaware only matters if you raise from investors, which does not fit this bootstrapped model.

Setup steps

Licenses

Insurance

Contracts you’ll need

• Website Terms of Service: Set rules for using the calculator and kit, limit your liability, and disclaim that content is educational, not licensed financial advice.
• Privacy Policy: Legally required once you collect emails; explains what you collect and how, and is mandatory for MailerLite and ad platforms.
• Digital product license / refund terms: State that the $39 kit is licensed for personal use, not resale, and spell out your refund policy at checkout.
• Affiliate disclosure: Required by the FTC when you earn affiliate commissions on recommended products; disclose clearly in content and emails.

Tax basics

• All net profit from the kit is self-employment income: you owe income tax plus about 15.3% self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare) on it, reported on Schedule C.
• If you expect to owe $1,000+ in tax for the year, the IRS wants quarterly estimated payments (roughly April, June, September, January); set aside a percentage of each sale.
• Startup costs like your ~$90 launch spend, software subscriptions, and a portion of your home internet may be deductible; keep every receipt from day one.
• Sales tax on digital products varies by state: if you use a merchant-of-record checkout (e.g. Lemon Squeezy) it handles collection for you; if not, you may need to register and remit. Check your state.
• Keep business and personal money fully separate in your dedicated account so your Schedule C is clean; never compute what you owe from a single sale, track the yearly total.