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Hi Show HN, I'm really excited to share what I have been working on the side since late November last year. I am a one-person team and this project has allowed
by jnfr 7y ago
Hi Show HN, I'm really excited to share what I have been working on the side since late November last year.
I am a one-person team and this project has allowed me to harness and grow from my few years of experience working as a software engineer. I was also able to flex my design muscles a little bit, while learning some marketing along the way.
Stack:
* Node.js w/ Typescript backend
* React + Semantic UI w/ Typescript frontend
* Bull for Redis queues
* Postgresql for database
* (soon) Flutter for mobile app
Lunch Money is a personal budgeting tool with native multi-currency support. This 100% grew out of a need to expand and improve the spreadsheet we had been using for about 1.5 years prior to starting development on this. My main goal was multi-currency support but also to rethink certain aspects of budgeting. Check out the website for more details & screenshots!
If this looks interesting, I encourage you to try it out, especially if the multi-currency aspect is useful to you. Thank you and open to any feedback.
Side story: I started this project while living abroad in Fukuoka, Japan for a few months. I did a whole write up on that journey here: https://lunchbag.ca/lunch-money https://lunchbag.ca/lunch-money
- gj0 7y agoThe design looks beautiful !
- jnfr 7y agoThank you so much!
- bszupnick 7y agoHey! It looks awesome! I'm a die-hard YNAB person and evangelist. The being said, I have bank accounts in two currencies and it's REALLY tough to balance that. Would you say there's a fit between the YNAB philosophy and the flow you created?
- jnfr 7y agoThank you for the kind words! Lunch Money is definitely a different way of budgeting. I mentioned this in an earlier comment, but my target audience is more first-time budgeters. I know it would be an uphill battle to convert YNAB'ers since they are very loyal to envelope-based method. That being said, since you're a die-hard YNAB'er, if you have any ideas around this, I'm all ears!
- jcutrell 7y agoI do the envelope method with EveryDollar. I like the simplicity of everydollar, but I want some of the features you’ve built (like average for a category - so obvious and simple, but SO useful!) How does this tool work in contrast to an envelope system?
- jnfr 7y agoI would say that there are definitely similarities between Lunch Money and the envelope system, but the main differentiator lies in the execution and psychology behind it. The envelope system is pretty strict and while there are some good points about it such as encouraging discipline and planning, Lunch Money way is more about course correction. Instead of focusing on setting the amount of money in your envelope for this month and cutting yourself off when you've depleted it, go through a mental exercise of predicting how much you'll be spending. Then, reassess how you did and adjust accordingly for the next budget period. The overarching goal is to get better at predicting your spending next month, rather than constraining yourself to adhere to your budget this month and I hope the tools we offer, such as the average, help to facilitate this.
- arosier 7y agoSince you're targeting first-time budgeters, have you thought about using any "game theory" to encourage them to learn about the importance of budgeting and keep coming back?
- oarsinsync 7y agoYou might mean "gamification" rather than "game theory" - one is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts, the other is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction in between rational decision-makers.
- vesinisa 7y agoThank you! It looks really sleek. I have one question: Financial data is generally viewed as highly private. What measures have you taken to ensure that the data that I enter to the service won't get exposed?
- Finkregh 7y agoDoes it work on Linux?
- jnfr 7y agoThis is a web-based app, so as long as you have a modern browser, yes it works on Linux :)
- pitaj 7y agoAny specific reason you decided to use Flutter instead of React native for your mobile app, given you use React for your existing frontend?
- nikolay 7y agoThat's what I wondered as well...
- oarsinsync 7y agoI suspect it's down to wanting to learn new tool-sets and skills: > this project has allowed me to harness and grow from my few years of experience working as a software engineer.
- jnfr 7y agoNailed it. I've worked on a React Native app before and honestly, didn't love it. I did my research on Flutter and love the motivation and execution behind it. Also, being able to quickly get to the first prototype and having way less platform-specific code as well as greater and sleeker performance compared to RN was a huge selling point for me. I also figured it wouldn't hurt to learn a new technical skill. However, I may be way in over my head now at this point to tackle this on my own. If there are any Flutter devs out there interested in helping out, feel free to shoot me an email at jen@lunchbag.dev
- Fiahil 7y agoI tested a lot of similar project in the past 2 years: Buxfer, GNUCash, YNAB 4 & 5, Mint, and Banktivity (currently using) and I'm willing to pay as high as $70 per year for a product that fulfills my needs. I liked your project, the interface is clean, responsive and fast. If I may, I would like to give you my list of the most useful features : - Self-hosted: Although, I used online apps in the past, this is now an _absolute_ requirement. I'm never, ever, going back to linking my bank accounts to a SAS app. I would be, of-course, happy to pay a premium for this (and for the Kubernetes templates). - Transaction imports: OFX, QIF, CSV, XLSX... - Regex category matching: For automatically matching transactions to the correct category - Subset selection on reports: Ignoring specific accounts, categories or tagged operations from specific reports reports - Multi-currency: I tried apps where the only currency available was USD, they did not stick around - Exports: transactions and reports - Rewrites: Rewriting transaction labels automatically (following user-defined rules) - Sanity checks: Travel expenses + Reimbursements must equal zero. If not, Amex messed up again and I should know about it Hope this helps!
- wellpast 7y agoThis is a great list of my exact same needs. I believe that the correct solution is a desktop application. How many of you/us do you think there are? And how much would you/they pay for this?
- jmiserez 7y agoFor personal budgeting, I believe it's crucial to have a mobile app for entry on the go and basic reports. Going through statements monthly/weekly and assigning the correct categories retroactively is just too hard.
- wellpast 7y agoI’ve always found it much easier to lean on downloaded transactions. Data entry through the day is way too cumbersome to me. Am I alone on this?
- tony 7y agoTypeScript is a beautiful thing. The next level things that powered me up are: - relay + graphql : map queries/mutations and object types to typescript. I have a workflow at the moment where python + graphene typings "bubble up" to typescript types via schema.graphql - React.FC + hooks : makes it that much easier to grok a component in a large codebase. - prettier : automatic code formatting on save, configuration works project-wide so all team members commit organized code - DefinitelyTyped being reliable when it comes to releasing packages has helped a lot I don't even use the autocompletion / go to definition that editors also usually bundle, but it's there, especially with VSCode. When the pieces don't fit, tslint catches it initially, if not that tsc. Also, despite only using TS less than a year, the typing errors have been getting more friendly in the past few TS releases.
- Joeri 7y agoCongrats on what looks like a great project. I've been a paying YNAB customer for over a year, so I assume I'm your target market. I haven't felt a particular need for multi-currency support. What would you say the advantage is over YNAB aside from multi-currency support? If it helps I can tell you what I really like about YNAB: - The mobile app is very easy and intuitive for entering transactions as they occur. It prefills fields based on my location so that I often only have to enter the amount. - Cloud sync and multi-device support means it is easy to share a budget with my wife. - Because all accounts, loans and recurring transactions are in there the reporting feature gives me a complete overview of our financial situation, past, present and future. - The YNAB community was very helpful when getting started, because in the beginning it can be tricky to understand how to fit edge cases into the transaction history (like loans and credit cards). As an aside: I don't use any transaction import features. I tried it out and found it disconnected me from my spending. Within the YNAB community it is considered best practice to not import transactions automatically. For that reason you may want to choose to not offer those features, as there is a good case to be made people shouldn't use them and they are likely to drain a huge amount of your time.
- jnfr 7y agoI would actually say that because you are a YNAB'er, you are not my target audience. Lunch Money works best for first-time budgeters because they don't have a previous foundation for budgeting. The Lunch Money philosophy is fundamentally different from YNAB, being that it's not envelope-based and we don't track/assign every dollar. YNAB'ers tend to be very loyal to the YNAB philosophy and while there's nothing wrong with that, it would be an uphill battle to convert already paying users of YNAB to Lunch Money. We started off with not importing transactions, but ultimately integrating with Plaid was useful for us to get our first 50 or so users off the ground and running right away. Thanks for the kind words and for taking the time to write feedback.
- Improvotter 7y agoI'm moving soon and could use the multicurrency support. I'm also graduating college so got to do all of this on my own now, I guess I'm your perfect new customer. Compared to all of the other apps, why would I for example choose you? Do you also have some more information on the credit card linking? Do you support debit cards? This is crucial to be honest. And what about UK bank accounts?
- jnfr 7y agoCongratulations on graduating college and good luck with the upcoming move! We currently use Plaid to connect to bank accounts which unfortunately only supports US/Canadian banks, so you might be out of luck for now if you were hoping for automatic imports. We are working on more ways beyond Plaid to import your transactions so if you would like, you can sign up for our mailing list to keep updated on our progress and eventually sign up when we can support your bank. If you would like a budgeting solution that is thoughtfully designed and encourages building good habits rather than setting spending constraints, I would encourage you to give Lunch Money a try. I would also encourage you to give the other apps a whirl, since our methods are all different. I hope you find a budgeting solution that works for you!
- kryptographs 7y agoHi there! Keith here from Plaid. We launched in the UK back in May this year - check out our blog post here https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-in-the-uk/ https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-in-the-uk/ and feel free to shoot us an email at europe@plaid.com if we can be of any help getting you set up!
- mywacaday 7y agoI took a look and won't use it as it can't connect to European banks and there is no manual import option. Is there a way to delete my account, can't find it?