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Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

lunchmoney.cc

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Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#61

Post by vesinisa »

jnfr wrote: post #2

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/ Typescri…

Thank 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?

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#62

Post by jcutrell »

jnfr wrote: post #27
bszupnick wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! 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?

Thank 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!

I 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?

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#63

Post by Finkregh »

jnfr wrote: post #2

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/ Typescri…

Does it work on Linux?

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#64

Post by vesinisa »

jnfr wrote: post #14
chopraaa wrote: post #8

Kudos. You've gone and done something a lot of us only plan to do but never get around to. I have a few questions though. 1. Does this work for everyone around the world? 2. How many ways do you have for sorting through transactions and making sense out of these? 3. My bank statements are a huge mess and I'd love a way I could aggregate all of my spend across multiple banks and cards. Sometimes, I send money to a fri…

Thank you so much!! 1. Right now I'm using Plaid to connect to bank accounts which currently only supports US and Canada-based banks (but even then, some banks are not supported fully). The next plan is to allow people to manually import their bank transactions via CSV, and after that, look into a European-based and/or Asia-based version of Plaid. That being said, anyone can use Lunch Money to add transactions manual…

FYI, EU is enforcing PSD2 directive from mid-September (yes, that's in two weeks). After that, all bank accounts in EU should - at least in theory - be available to 3rd party aggregators. I am sure Plaid is looking into it. This should allow you to easily expand to EU in near future.

(Obligatory note: the reality is that not all banks are yet ready for PSD2 and opening the APIs for their customer's accounts. But from mid-September, banks that are still dragging their feet will be eligible for fines, which should act as a good motivation.)

Anyway, it looks really amazing what you've done, and I'm really looking forward to services like yours expanding to EU.

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#65

Post by pitaj »

jnfr wrote: post #2

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/ Typescri…

Any specific reason you decided to use Flutter instead of React native for your mobile app, given you use React for your existing frontend?

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#66

Post by agapon »

jnfr wrote: post #53
solarkraft wrote: post #44

$3 per month or $29 per year for now . Why should I use a service hosted by someone else for something this important? Not only will I (besides losing money) have to worry about not being able to access my data, but especially about somebody else accessing it.

I suppose it could be more clear that you would be _locking in_ that pricing, so there is no need to worry about that shooting up to something crazy after a period of usage :)

Looks like you didn't actually reply to the question here. It was not about pricing. It was about access to data (and trust).

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#68

Post by arosier »

jnfr wrote: post #27
bszupnick wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! 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?

Thank 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!

Since 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?

Re: Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support

#69

Post by pj_mukh »

How 'proactive' is it? My biggest problem with budgeting is thinking about my budget before I spend the money. I'm guessing that'll become more apparent with the mobile app, so just before I spend, I can check it.

However, are you allowed to read in Credit Card "Recent Spends" (which I've always assumed is some Credit Card Dark Design stuff)?

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