
Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support - jnfr
https://lunchmoney.cc
======
jnfr
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)

~~~
Fiahil
I 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
This 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
For _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
I’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?

~~~
vitoc
Same here, I tried the data entry way (telling myself that the friction
encourages thinking more before spending). It lasted about 2 years before I
started creating import helpers to get transactions from my current accounts
and etc.

Now, I put together some JS to create custom import helpers that adapts to
different bank formats. Unsurprisingly, banks doesn't seem to want to
converge/adopt a standard on transaction exports still (like a simple standard
on the CSV will do), despite all the hype about open banking and such. Step by
step?

I have some libraries that I reuse to create these custom helpers documented
here:

[https://docs.prudent.me/docs/dev/creating_ext](https://docs.prudent.me/docs/dev/creating_ext)

This works with the wrapper that I created as well :)

------
ryandvm
I really like where this is going. It looks like a much more polished version
of my own personal solution for this problem.

The one thing I really dislike is the way transactions are brought into the
system. I get that it's preferable to outsource that to entities that
specialize in it, like Yodlee/Plaid/whatever, but when I get to that IFRAME
asking me to enter my banking credentials... sorry, I just can't bring myself
to do it.

I understand banks are probably unbelievably slow to support standard
authorization schemes like OAuth, but of all the credentials for me to get
sloppy with, my bank credentials are pretty much at the top of "no way" list.

Any chance as an interim you could support manually importing CSV?

(And yes, beware of the non-paying "customers" that like to suggest the
_one_feature_ they need...)

~~~
jnfr
I hear you loud and clear. Allowing manual import of transactions via CSV is
very high on our feature list! Using a service like Plaid to automatically
import transactions was a great way to attract our first users and validate
our product. Going forward, we definitely want to also support more ways of
importing transactions.

~~~
edraferi
What are you thinking about OFX/QFX? CSV is nice for breadth but some of the
specialized formats are pretty nice for these kinds of tools.

~~~
jnfr
I haven't done extensive research in this yet, so I'm happy to hear this
suggestion of using more specialized formats. I'll keep those in mind when I
do get to this feature. Thank you!

------
rcconf
This looks fantastic! I've used Mint to track my expenses and this looks way
better (especially the course correction concept.) The biggest issue that
comes up when entering financial data into something like this is how is the
data stored and what security measures are in place? If my financial data was
leaked, I know that hackers could use that to get access to my bank accounts.

Please don't take this personally, but reading through your blog post, you
mentioned that you had limited DevOps experience that makes me a bit scared
that regular security updates and security practices may not be something that
you were thinking about when the app was being developed.

I'm going to signup and play with it regardless, but it would be really
difficult to put my actual financial data in the app.

Question: Is security of user data something you have thought of? Do you plan
to hire someone that is security minded if the app does well?

~~~
jnfr
This is a great point and a valid question and I'm glad you brought it up. I
wrote up a Privacy Policy
([https://lunchmoney.cc/privacy](https://lunchmoney.cc/privacy)) to address
some concerns users might have about their data and how it's handled. In terms
of connecting your bank accounts, all of Lunch Money's interactions with your
bank is through a third-party service called Plaid which is also used by many
other financial apps on the market. They've written up a few white papers on
their security. That being said, I only have read-access and don't do any sort
of interaction with your bank (i.e. depositing some funds and having your
verify it). No personal information is pulled either.

The DevOps stuff in my blog post was more referring to stuff like CI, deploy
infrastructure, and other behind-the-scene workflows. I've previously worked
for 3.5 years mostly as a back-end software engineer at Twitter and was the
founding engineer of a YC Fellowship &500-backed pet health start-up handling
thousands of pet medical records, so I've gained a lot of experience when it
comes to keep things secure.

All that being said, security and user data is really important and not
something I take lightly at all. I hear this feedback a lot and am
continuously thinking of ways to put my user's minds at ease. If you have any
ideas or want to talk about it more, I'm always open to chatting.

------
phodge
I'm keen to have a look. I've been frustrated with other tools because they're
too focused on splitting everything into identical monthly budgets when that's
really not how finances work IRL:

1) My driver's license costs $150 to renew once every 5 years - I don't want
to split that into 60 monthly allocations of $2.50 and end up having over $100
sitting in my account for an expense that's still not due for over a year. I
just want a tool that knows what expenses are coming up over the next 3/6/12
months and let me know if it thinks I'm going to overdraw my account. $150 is
actually really easy to scrape together when you have 6 months notice that
you're going to be short.

2) I spend $100 on public transport every 2nd Thursday because I get paid
every 2nd Thursday. That means either $200/month or $300/month depending how
many Thursdays fall inside the calendar month, and whether they're actually
the Thursdays that I get paid on. Having a monthly budget that allocates
$217/month on public transport (because that's the monthly average) makes me
set aside $17 most months unnecessarily, or possibly leave me short $83 and
unable to get to work if I spend the remainder.

~~~
jnfr
Currently our recurring expense feature only supports monthly and yearly
expenses. We have thought about expanding this to also support "upcoming
expenses" which is what your driver's license cost would fit under.

We have gotten feature requests for custom budgeting periods to align with
payment schedules which sounds like it might fit your second use case.

Thanks for sharing your interesting and unique use cases. I hope you find a
budgeting solution that works for you, whether that's Lunch Money or a
homegrown spreadsheet!

------
dfsegoat
You nailed it here. I've been waiting for something like this - Mint etc.
don't give me enough functionality in terms of forecasting, seeing a trend and
helping me to modify my behavior.

If you could also add a "Simulate spending X {currency} on YYYY-MM-DD" type
functionality for forecasting, that would be huge. This was something I miss
from one of the old Microsoft Money desktop apps, and being able to see how
making a purchase at a point in time will affect you 1 week, 1 month, 1
quarter down the road etc. is a powerful deterrent to impulse buying.

edit: clarity. ish.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the feedback!

Upcoming expenses is a great idea, and was an original feature from my own
budgeting spreadsheet but has not made it as a feature yet on Lunch Money.
Your comment definitely helps boost up its priority :)

------
fjp
I was halfway through building something like this just for msyelf. My main
issues with existing options are:

1\. Mint and others always seem to automatically count transferring money from
Chase to an external savings account as _spending_ which drives me insane.

2\. Not being able to split transactions (which you solved)

3\. Reassign the date of a transaction, or from a technical perspective,
create an "effective date" in addition to the true transaction date. I've been
back and forth on whether this is actually a good idea or not. But I really
want to count my July 5th electrical bill as a June expense, for example.

~~~
jnfr
You can reassign dates for your transactions in Lunch Money. This is pretty
common practice, especially with recurring expenses. For example, bills that
get paid on the last day of the month but get posted the next month can be
altered so they reflect the appropriate month.

~~~
fjp
Awesome, thanks for the reply!

------
_def
This is exactly what I want. Like many others, I have my own personal
solution, which I used for the last 3 years. But it's far from "complete" and
lacks many convenient features your app provides. Including a wonderful UI.
The only thing I wish for is CSV imports because my bank is not supported. It
nags on me that essentially my most private data is not in my hands anymore
but this is so much more useful, I'm enjoying it already.

~~~
jnfr
We definitely recognize the aversion of using a service like Plaid, and we are
working on more ways beyond that to import your transactions. Thanks for the
feedback!

------
chopraaa
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
friend only to get it back after a few days (or months, even). Would be great
if you could link 2 transactions together like this as well.

~~~
jnfr
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 manually in any of the 150+ currencies currently supported.

2\. So we do a couple of things under the hood– auto-categorization and
picking out your recurring (monthly) expenses. Our auto-categorization gets
smarter as you make any fixes (via Category Rules). We also offer a lot of
transaction management features such as splitting and grouping which you can
use to make sense of your own spending habits.

3\. Yes, our latest feature, grouped transactions, exactly fits your use case.
You can use grouped transactions to link up credit card payments (i.e. -$200
from your chequing account, +200 to your credit card combines to $0 in your
transactions list!) or track friends paying you back (i.e. you picked up the
$200 tab for a dinner with 6 friends. You can group together that big
transaction plus all your Venmo transactions to reflect how much your share
actually was).

Thanks for the questions!

~~~
_0o6v
Really great job and I'm digging the UI. I see that Plaid has just launched in
the UK so hopefully you can add support for us Brits soon (if we haven't self-
combusted in a Brexit meltdown by then).

------
jontas
I'm a YNAB user and I just spent some time playing around with LunchMoney. A
few quick feedback items from 10 minutes of use:

\--Let me add new categories from the transaction screen. I don't think your
default categories are comprehensive enough and I had to add a lot, and it is
a pain going back and forth between the two screens.

\--More default categories that make sense: rent, cell phone, internet,
medical, software subscriptions.

\--If I go back 3 months and categorize an old transaction, apply that
category to all other matching transactions. I don't want to through every
single old transaction and categorize. Alternatively you could use the YNAB
method and not even pull in old transactions (or maybe just go back 1 week or
something). It feels overwhelming to log in and see data that is wrong due to
miscategorizations and then realize I need to back through hundreds of old
transactions and fix the category.

Overall I think you have a great product! I am definitely interested in
continuing to use it, I like the UI and it feels so much faster and more
responsive than YNAB (their ui is extremely slow). With any of these tools
there is always time/cost associated with a user's onboarding and making that
as seamless as possible will get people hooked and make switching costs high.

Good luck!

------
aresant
Here's a question - has anybody designed a platform yet that can break down
and reconcile Amazon purchases?

I've given up on every single household budgeting / tracking solution due to
the huge volume of Amazon orders our family places across regular Amazon,
Amazon Fresh, Prime Now, etc.

As a result I wind up with a budget that looks like "50% Amazon" and then
everything else.

What I'd really like to know is categorically where is that money to Amazon
going as a category.

------
tomschlick
This looks great but a couple of things:

1) You should be defining a strict CSP and a few other headers given that this
deals with financial information:
[https://securityheaders.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Flunchmoney.cc&f...](https://securityheaders.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Flunchmoney.cc&followRedirects=on)

2) When trying to give provider info, I hit an error both times (with
different financial providers) on the Plain screens.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the feedback! Plaid is rate-limiting me right now, sorry for the
inconvenience! Trying to get it sorted ASAP :)

------
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)?

~~~
pfranz
I wish there was more breakdown in "personal finance" apps. Years and years
ago I was looking for budgeting apps and Quicken kept coming up. It looked
like it mostly did checkbook balancing and keeping track of multiple accounts
--not anything I needed.

Mint worked out well for awhile. I feel like it was a decent substitute for
"writing every transaction in a notebook for a week" to help you find that gym
membership you've been meaning to cancel or realize how your occasional lattes
add up. It also helped with categories for previous months and "am I making
more than I'm spending" which helped me get out of debt.

More recently I tried YNAB, which seems like it does those things well but
also help with future month categories (basically a digital version of the
envelope method) and help set aside money for specific goals. But after trying
it a few times it never quite clicked and I never seemed to keep up with it.

These all seem to fill different needs but it's not obvious until you start
putting data into them. I check out new apps all the time and they often fall
into the same, few well developed category, but it takes up a lot of time to
suss out (and it's a bit scary handing over credentials when you're
evaluating)

------
isaacaggrey
YNAB user here - this looks great and I love new tools :) but what
differentiates this from YNAB besides non-envelope budgeting method?

also nice - the ability for a partner/spouse to collaborate on the same budget
which is also a nice plus Lunch Money has if there is an "last edited" feature
and collaboration as a 1st-class thing (YNAB is stubborn on this point)

~~~
jnfr
I would say Lunch Money is totally different from YNAB. We tried to rethink
most aspects of budgeting and came up with our own philosophy of how to best
approach it. My target audience isn't YNAB'ers since I know most of them are
fiercely loyal to the YNAB philosophy, which is totally okay :)

To your point about collaboration, we track who did what, but we don't go as
far as having a complete edit history. It seems like a good idea though, I'll
add that to our backlog. Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
isaacaggrey
Could you elaborate more on how it is totally different?

I understand your target audience is not YNAB per se, but b/c of that very
fierce loyalty you could draw some currently paying customers like myself. :)

I ask this in a genuine way but I'll try to play around with Lunch Money.

From your landing page, these features all exist in YNAB: * being able to
review transactions that need to be categorized, splitting transactions *
adding projected monthly expenses that haven't been charged yet * warnings for
an account not importing correctly * allowing you to choose between what you
spent last month vs budgeted last month vs spent on average

What does seem unique is better visualization on anticipation of spending and
spending habits, which is definitely nice!

Though I think what you mean is perhaps the "feel" of budgeting vs the exact
features. At the end of the day, YNAB just forces you to categorize vs
envelope method technically.

------
lifeformed
Nice! I'd would love to replace my custom system with this if some of the
following features were implemented:

\- A subcategory or tagging system. When viewing the budget, I could just
filter those items. This would be nice for my side business stuff, so I could
have categories like "biz->income" and "biz->hosting", and then just view the
"biz" category to see multiple flows. Or more simply, I don't necessarily need
subcategories if I could just view multiple budget categories in one view.

\- When choosing a category when approving transactions, it would be nice to
be able to type to search the category

\- Also when approving transactions, when I click on the checkmark, I'd prefer
if they either disappeared instantly or just didn't disappear at all. Right
now I'm afraid to click multiple items quickly since I might mis-click when it
disappears unexpectedly, clicking on the next line. I think it's important to
remove all friction from the transaction approval section, since that's the
most commonly used part.

\- How do I categorize recurring expenses? It doesn't seem like I can. Why
not?

\- Some way of showing big, unique groups of expenses, such as a wedding, or
vacation, or buying a computer. I wouldn't want to factor that into my monthly
budget, but I'd like to see the total costs of this years "special expenses".
Maybe I could tag transactions as "coast trip" or "gaming pc" or "wedding",
and then view all special expenses as their own category?

------
aflag
I'm on the phone right now, it's not clear in the bit of the site I can see.
But is it possible to run it on the desktop, entirely offline?

~~~
jnfr
It's a web application, it won't do you much good if you're offline
unfortunately. That being said, our mobile app will be optimized for offline
usage!

~~~
aflag
Thanks for clarifying. The main reason I ask is that I'm not too keen on
sharing my banking data with yet another party. I'd give it a shot if I could
use entirely offline, though.

------
nightski
It looks pretty, but unfortunately I found budgeting methods that are not
envelope based (such as YNAB where every dollar is assigned a job) are not
adequate. After adopting the YNAB method I have seen how far superior it is.

If I could combine YNAB's budgeting method with your reporting & analysis we'd
have a true winner.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the feedback! It is definitely a different way of budgeting. My
target audience is more first-time budgeters. I know it would be an uphill
battle to convert YNAB'ers since they are loyal to envelope-based method.

~~~
_def
What is the difference between the envelope-based method and the categories in
Lunch Money? It seems very similar to me.

~~~
nightski
With lunch money it looks like you set up an ideal spending amount per
category based on your history. But whether you stay within those limits is
completely up to you. It might warn you if you go over in a category but that
is about it.

In an envelope based system you can only budget dollars you have (that's where
the name comes from, you'd literally stuff cash in envelopes). If you
overspend from one envelope/category then you have to take from another
envelope. It's perfectly fine to do this, but it just makes the sacrifice that
much clearer. For example, let's say I splurge on restaurants this month -
then I might have to steal from that vacation budget a bit in order to cover
it.

The second aspect is building up money for future expenses. I can set up an
envelope/category for a vacation in 12 months and throw 30 bucks a month at
it. That money accrues each month and unless I steal from that envelope it's
assigned to the vacation so I'll have the expense covered when it comes.

That's the gist of it. There is a ton more information online.

~~~
_def
Hm I think saving would work for me if I increase a budget every month without
spending it. And if you can set your current balance somehow in Lunch Money (I
don't know at this moment) then you would see if you overspend (hopefully).
These are of course very valid and important aspects.

------
Flimm
Yes! I am especially interested in multiple currency support. Most budgeting
software doesn't provide this well or at all. Some questions:

* Is each transaction stored in its currency, or is everything converted to a main currency when stored? The latter is lossy and problematic.

* Does the app expect each currency to have a fixed exchange rate? If it does, that's problematic.

* You are asked to select a primary currency when signing up. Can you change the primary currency later? Will any information be lost if you do?

* How do you handle transfers from one bank account in one currency to another bank account in another currency? Will it handle an exchange rate that is different from the one the app might be expecting?

* How does budgeting work in multiple currencies, how are fluctuating exchange rates used?

I'll definitely be trying this out regardless of whether I get an answer here,
I am really excited about the potential. :)

~~~
jnfr
These are really great questions, thanks for asking!

1\. Every transaction is stored in its original currency. The conversion to
your primary currency happens on demand.

2\. We fetch daily currency rates so it should more-or-less accurately reflect
the market. We have gotten feature requests for exposing this and allowing
manual override of currency rates. If this would be important to you, feel
free to let us know and it'll get bumped up on the priority list!

3\. You can feel free to change your primary currency at any time and as often
as you want in the Settings tab. There is no risk as it will have no permanent
effect on your transactions!

4\. Bank transactions show up in the currency that the bank account is set to
so if you transferred -US$100 to +CA$133 to a CAD bank account, it will show
up as two transactions in their respective currencies. However, to your point,
in the totals, the currency rate might fluctuate a bit and it might add
-US$100 and +CA$133 up with a few cents discrepancy. This could be solvable if
we allow manual override of currency rates.

5\. When it comes to multi-currency monthly budgeting, we use the currency
rate from the first of the month to normalize everything to your primary
currency. You can set a budget in any currency. For example, you can budget
10000yen for restaurants, and in your budget summary, you will see US$93
expected spending.

Hope this makes sense and feel free to reach back out with any more questions.

------
solarkraft
$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.

~~~
jnfr
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 :)

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

------
galfarragem
Thought-provoking idea: you don't need a personal budget.

[https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system#hamster-
budget](https://github.com/slowernews/hamster-system#hamster-budget)

~~~
cheeze
This is such a stereotypical HN post I almost don't believe it's real

* CLI tools with some wonky syntax

* You don't need X because there is a random github repo that solves your problem! (To be fair, this is within the hacker ethos/mindset)

* Assumption that folks can dip into savings or whatnot if they are over that month

* Assumption that folks _have a net worth_

* Assumption that it's easy to just "tighten up" if you're spending too much

This probably works great for a high earner with extra money laying around and
a decent net worth. This would be _terrible_ advice for someone who actually
needs to follow a budget. A huge percentage of people are living month to
month and don't have the option to loosen up or reactively tighten up after a
month of too many expenses.

Some folks don't need a personal budget. That is the minority. Those folks can
use wonky CLI utils to keep track of their life.

In that same vein, why even bother? Just add up your net worth and if it's
lower than you want, just "tighten up"...

Terrible advice IMO.

~~~
galfarragem
Another thought-provoking idea: try the method for a while and write a blog
post about it.

~~~
lensopra
> When your net worth is too risky (for your personality) get more tight.

> When you feel comfortable with your number you can loosen up a bit.

I don't feel inclined to try this method. You've basically described how every
highschooler manages their wallet. The system falls apart (or turns into a
budget) the moment you have a single problem to solve.

Example. I have $10,000 in my checking account and a $15,000 car loan, so my
net worth is -$5,000. Either I don't buy groceries this month, or I admit that
I need to know more than my net worth to make financial decisions.

------
robot1
As a college student who often pays for or pays others through Venmo for
various expenses, the splitting/combining transactions seems super useful for
not losing that information. Will definitely try it out!

~~~
jnfr
Thank you so much! I do believe it definitely reflects modern spending habits
:) If you have any questions or issues, feel free to reach out!

------
tjbiddle
I'm living abroad in Bali, Indonesia. 90% of my payments are made in cash.

\- Does this have an option to manually add entries?

\- Does this have an option to input one currency, but have it easily convert
to another currency?

~~~
postcynical
Similar situation. I use mostly cash tranasctions or non-american credit cards
which are not available using auto-import. An efficient keyboard-based method
of manual entry of trx is crucial. Just checked this app but i coulnd't
quickly add any transactions.

So far I have used Toshl app on and off to monitor my monthly spend, which has
excellent manual entry with multi-currency, etc.

------
te_chris
I'm a huge fan of Pocketsmith. Highly recommend it:
[https://www.pocketsmith.com](https://www.pocketsmith.com) Why should I switch
to this?

~~~
xoher
Does Pocketsmith use Plaid to connect to your bank accounts?

------
mvexel
Thanks for sharing, impressive what you've built already.

Some of my bills, such as my mortgage, show up twice a month. Do you plan to
support recurring transactions that are something else than monthly or yearly?

I may have missed it in the pre-signup screens, but how much do you intend to
charge?

To get users started with a budget, perhaps you could assume the average in
each category once you have a couple months worth of spending.

------
zedpm
I like the support for reimbursement; YNAB has poor support for this use case
and a hostile attitude towards improving it.

------
dr_roots
Looks like an awesome product! I've used Ynab for a while, but since I'm not
based in the US bank imports were not useful to me and didn't justify the
price. Since then, I've been actively looking for a budgeting app that would
fit my needs. Will definitely try this one.

------
TurkishPoptart
Have you considered releasing a freeware thing that I can play around with
experiment with, which doesn't require payment information?

Also, I didn't see your answer to the guy's question about the safeguards you
take to uphold information security measures. Could you comment on this
please?

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t0astbread
This looks really cool! I'm not sure if I wanna register myself on this
service yet so I haven't seen a lot of it but I'm curious: How is my
transaction data imported? Are there APIs for that or do something else?
(Sorry if this is explained somewhere on the site already.)

~~~
jnfr
I use Plaid ([https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com)) which also powers many
other financial apps.

~~~
t0astbread
Oh cool they actually use the PSD2 in Europe

~~~
kryptographs
Yes we do! Keith here from Plaid. If you want more info, shoot us an email at
europe@plaid.com -- and if you happen to be in London next week, we’re doing a
demo of our Open Banking/PSD2 integrations hosted by TechHub. You can get
tickets here [https://www.techhub.com/event/techhubtuesday-demo-
night-26/](https://www.techhub.com/event/techhubtuesday-demo-night-26/)

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rebuilder
This looks very good! I think you've got a customer in me.

One question: Does this support saving for future expenses? Say I'm setting
aside a sum each month for vehicle maintenance, but of course only spend money
on maintenance a few times a year. Can I track that somehow with Lunch Money?

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jnfr
Sorry for the minor outage with connecting bank accounts. We're back live now
:) Thanks everyone for the support, interest, and feedback! It's very much
appreciated!

Also wanted to leave my email address in case anyone wants to reach out:
jen@lunchbag.dev

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Arn_Thor
Are foreign-currency amounts calculated by the exchange rate at the time/on
the day the transfer or spending took place, or does it utilize the current
exchange rate? My budget operates with four currencies, easily, in a year so
it adds up

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cheschire
Looks interesting, but like most financial services only helps with my
American accounts, and provides only manual entries to help me track my
accounts in the EU. The multi-currency aspect would be nice though once Plaid
expands more in Europe.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the feedback! It is a bummer that Plaid is only offered in CA/US
right now. I'll be working on allowing importing of bank transactions via CSV
soon so hopefully that takes out a bit of the manual work.

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atemerev
Looks interesting, thanks. Could you add a notice that connecting bank
accounts works only with the US banks? (It's not like I wanted to; here in
Switzerland, we have some cultural differences regarding the banking
security).

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Aeolun
My biggest issue with these apps is always that they are generally US centric.
So even if I can use it with JPY, my Japanese bank is not supported and it all
becomes a bit moot. Without auto import I just cannot use these apps.

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orisho
Is there a way to get an email when you have CSV import? Since Plaid does not
support my bank, and there's no CSV import, this pretty much is unusable for
me, but sounds good!

~~~
jnfr
Shoot me an email at jen@lunchbag.dev and I'll reach out!

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throwaway180118
I really love the design of your site. Do you use a CSS framework?

~~~
eevahr
[https://semantic-ui.com/](https://semantic-ui.com/)

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mosselman
This looks like what I for my own financials, only more done ;).

I like the graphs, although I am confused by the example where you are under
budget, but the line is still red.

~~~
jnfr
Perhaps the red I used was a poor colour choice, but it's not red because
you're under/over budget. Just needed a contrasting colour to show the two
different lines! Feedback noted however, thanks for sharing!

~~~
mosselman
I understand, just wanted to mention it. The app looks great! Good luck with
it.

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nulldll
Forgive me if this has already been answered, but what's your projected
timeline on an app release?

Wonderful UI, got setup with zero issues. Thanks for sharing!

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kartiklad
I wish this worked with Australian banks and credit cards. I do most of my
transactions through credit cards and want to use something like this

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vorpalhex
This looks great, but is there any writeup on how the security for it works?
Are things encrypted at rest? Has there been any auditing?

~~~
jnfr
Hey, I realized I misread your original comment and I wanted to address the
points you're making.

There isn't any writeup on the security for how it works other than my privacy
policy ([https://lunchmoney.cc/privacy](https://lunchmoney.cc/privacy)) which
touches on those points at a high level. We're just getting started and are
therefore mostly focused on product validation and market fit so we haven't
done any heavy security detailing such as external auditing. All that being
said, I get this feedback a lot. Security and user data is really important
and not something we take lightly at all and is something we will be
continuously thinking about throughout the course of our journey.

If you have any ideas or want to talk about it more, I'm always open to
chatting. jen@lunchbag.dev

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ko3us
Nice work! Looks great and easy to use. What do you use to get transaction
history?

~~~
jnfr
Thank you! I'm using Plaid ([https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com)) to connect
to users' banks.

~~~
mcintyre1994
They apparently recently added UK support - do you support that feature in the
UK too? Also do you have or plan an API for inserting transactions? I
currently use YNAB and my UK bank supports a webhook for transactions, which I
have automation that inserts it into YNAB using their API - if you don't
support Plaid UK then that's a decent workaround.

Edit: I signed up and no UK banks seem to be supported.

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uwuhn
Looks great, I'm looking forward to the mobile app.

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maedayx
looks like too many people wanted to check it out - Plaid is returning a 429

~~~
jnfr
Indeed!! Trying to get this sorted now.

