This app is a bit of an experiment for me, I tend to over-engineer my side-projects and run out of enthusiasm or time before ever getting them to a point that I'm happy to make them public. This on the other hand I'll be building in public and I'm going to get to an MVP as quick and dirty as I can (whilst making sure user data is kept completely safe).
For the last 20 years I have kept a personal 'budget' spreadsheet, at times when I've needed to be more on top of my finances it's proved invaluable for making sure that I will have the money I need, in the account it needs to be in, at the time it needs to be there. I've tried a number of budgeting apps over the years and none of them have been able to beat my spreadsheet for the ease of use and most importantly forward looking visibility of my finances that it provides. For at least a decade I've been meaning to build an app to replace my spreadsheet and now I'm finally getting around to it.
Most budgeting apps are either very basic, tied to some kind of mechanism for saving / investing surplus funds or harvesting your data to then sell to hedge funds or other companies. Most of the existing apps seem to be aimed at people who already have surplus income whereas I think the people who can benefit the most from an app like this are those people for who money is tight. The app I'm planning to build will...
- Be 100% free (no selling of user data either), open source, multi-platform with mobile and desktop apps.
- Will allow manual entry, csv import and direct bank feeds of income and expenditure data.
- Handle recurring income / expenditure processing and forecasting.
- Have infinitely customisable budgets / pots.
- Have an overview screen that forecasts balances across accounts, taking into account expected income / expenditure.
- Guide people towards services that may be able to help them if they are in financial difficulties.
- and a lot more, I'll flesh this README out another day.
I'd love for other people to want to contribute and help out with this project. If you want to talk I'm @iSCJT on twitter or you can email me at sean@speckledbanana.com.
There's lots more in my head but these are the big ticket bits of functionality that will form the core of the application:
- Landing page V1
- Manual spend tracking
- Landing page V2 with alpha signup
- Recurring payments & balance forecasting
- Transaction uploads (csv)
- Monzo / Starling API integration
- Open banking integration to fetch transactions https://nordigen.com/en/account-information/
- Financial assistance / education services (CAB, Money Advice Line etc.)
- Android & iOS apps