Background
9 years ago, when I needed to put some order to my personal finances, I came across YNAB (short for You Need A Budget). The app, but specially the method were very helpful while managing my money. They helped me plan, save and spend my money consciously.
Since I started using the app, the monthly price it did nothing but to increase, and while some stuff was ok (like adding Goals to the categories), I didn’t got a significant improvement in my experience as a user.
The price went from around $5/month to $15/month now, if you pay month by month. And yes, the app adds a lot of value to me, but if I’m putting $180 per year in an app, I hope it at least improves over time.
Besides that, one of the main features that I could never use, but still payed the whole price, was “Automatic Bank Sync”, which allows you to import your bank movements (spendings, income) into the app so you don’t have to do it manually. This is a very nice feature, but works only for north american banks. It did work shortly for some EU banks, but I never had the chance to use it.
I’ve tried some other apps, but none was quite good for me to switch, or didn’t have EU Bank Import… For a long time, I thought that there is a possible market in there, mostly because how expensive YNAB is.
The idea
I came to belive that there is a market for an app if the following is given:
- Lets you use the YNAB method (envelope budgeting).
- Costs less than YNAB ($15). Even better if below $10.
- Bonus: Has EU Bank Sync
- Not needed but would add a lot of value
At the end of the day, I was using the most basic features of YNAB (+ Goals) and I was paying a lot per month, and I knew some other people also wanted to move away from them (you can check “YNAB Alternatives” in reddit).
One could argue for ever about which features are a must and what not, but I settled for those above. All the rest are nice to have.
What’s out there already?
Before starting to hack like crazy I checked online what other people might find when they look for alternatives, and I was surprised to find that there is still almost no good alternative!
What I did find, is nice Open Source solution called Actual Budget that fulfilled all three points I think are needed 🎉. Even more important, it has MIT license, which means that you can basically do whatever you want with the code, even change it and commercialize it (I re-checked 5 times).
Of course the existing solution doesn’t fit right away: it’s thought as a local-first app and is meant to be deployed either locally or in an instance where only you will have access. Additionally, to use the EU Bank Sync, you need to follow a relatively long manual that I’m sure it scares off a lot of people.
Check and launch 🚀
Even thought Actual doesn’t fit 100%, it does 99%. So if I can avoid writing a whole app myself, I’ll take it. The service itself would be to host the app for the users and develop some nice missing features if it gets tracktion.
I tested it myself to see that it’s actually possible to sell it as a SaaS, and the result was positive. Additionally, it’s programed in Typescript which I’m comfortable with. That was enough to build a landing page with the 4 bullet points, highlighting that it’s a YNAB alternative.
After that, I did a bit of the usual reddit spamming promotion, letting other know that this option exists now.
Next
I’m writing this post with 2 months delay, so things already changed regarding the concept and the landing, but I’ll elaborate more in the next post. If you want to take a look at the landing, here you go.