p/lunch-money
Delightfully simple personal finance & budgeting
Jen
Lunch Money 2.0 β€” Delightfully simple budgeting
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Lunch Money is a web-based personal finance and budgeting tool for the modern-day spender with:
- native multicurrency support
- powerful transaction utilities
- a complex and customizable rules engine
- a developer API
- CSV importing tool
- and much more!
Replies
Best
Anna Filou
Looks good! I haven't tried it yet but have a question relating to multi-currency support. I read on the website that Lunch Money uses the conversion rate of the date of the transaction to make sure it's "as accurate as possible." But is it possible to manually set a conversion rate? Automatically setting the rate doesn't always work. Take the following scenarios as examples of that. 1) I pay for something in USD from my EUR account. I will know exactly how much I paid *in euro* as well as the equivalent amount in USD. 2) I transfer EUR from my EUR account to my USD account.
Jen
@anna_0x Hi Anna! Thanks for sharing your use case. Being able to manually override a particular transaction's currency rate is not currently supported but has been requested before. We will consider implementing this as the demand for this feature grows– your input definitely helps with that!
Jen
Hello Product Hunt πŸ‘‹! My name is Jen and I'm the one-woman team behind Lunch Money. Quick backstory I started working on Lunch Money as a digital nomad in Fukuoka, Japan in January 2019 (more about that here). Fast-forward 8 months later, I launched Lunch Money into the wild to take on big names like Mint and YNAB. What's new? Since our first feature on Product Hunt 7 months ago, we've matured a lot as a product and added a slew of new core features including: πŸ’₯ Fully customizable Rules Engine to automate your workflow πŸ’₯ Developer API for your own tools and plug-ins πŸ’₯ CSV-based transaction importing tool πŸ’₯ Query Tool to run analytics against your transactions πŸ‘‰ See why users choose Lunch Money, in their own words! πŸ‘ˆ Pricing & Product Hunt Promo Lunch Money offers pricing in both USD and CAD. Both monthly & yearly subscriptions are available. Use code PH2020 to get 25% off your first annual subscription! (Pst- if you sign up today, the code will be automatically applied!) Quick FAQ Is my bank supported for automatic imports? We use Plaid to automatically import transactions from most US & Canadian banks. If you're outside of this region, I encourage you to check out our CSV import tool or look into building your own integration with our API. Almost 40% of our users are outside of US & Canada, so these have proven to be sustainable methods for getting transactions into Lunch Money! Is there a mobile app? The short answer is "not yet". Since we are a small development team of 1, our current biggest strength is speed of iteration. Once we introduce a new platform, our development cycles will get drastically longer. We're focused on rounding out the core product more before we put effort into a mobile app. But it's definitely coming soon :) Thank you for considering Lunch Money! Feel free to comment below, reach out to me via Twitter (@lunchbag or @lunchmoney_app) or email jen@lunchmoney.app. I'd love to hear what you think! πŸ˜„
Gareth Price
@lunchbag "Lunch Money offers pricing in both USD and CAD." This was the fastest way you put me off, a UK person who is one of 60% of your users. There's lots of ways you can receive money of different currencies, why limit yourself to just USD or CAD? Limiting automatic import is one thing, but I wouldn't mind using the CSV tool you mention in your FaQ.
Jen
@iamgp If it was possible, we would charge in *all the currencies*, considering how we strive to be internationally-friendly with our multicurrency features. The main issue is we're a Canadian-based company and we're limited by Stripe to only accepting payments in USD & CAD. Being a Canadian-based company is also why we have limits on automatic imports. None of it is by choice, it's simply the landscape that recent European data legislation has introduced. We're continuously working with relevant companies in the EU & UK to get around this but as I'm sure you can imagine, it's going to be a long and arduous process. The other alternative is for us to incorporate somewhere in the EU and be able to charge in more currencies and be within the law to automatically import bank data. But this will only introduce more fees and higher liabilities for us, and as a tiny bootstrapped start-up, it's simply not within scope right now. Almost 40% of our users are international, with a high proportion of them in the UK. Happy to report they've no complaints on these limitations with Lunch Money. A few have even written their own integrations to UK-based banks using our developer API. The Monzo one is open-sourced :)
Tom Medema
Congrats on the launch, look forward to trying it out! Landing page looks great, I left some annotated comments here that should help increase your conversions hopefully too :) https://app.usebubbles.com/23822...
Jen
@tom4 Thanks Tom!
Mike Staub
Fantastic product! Thanks for sharing so much about the process of creating it, it's very inspirational for other solopreneurs like myself.
Ben
I've been a very happy user since about August 2019 -- ironically, everything is working so smoothly that I've gone from logging in several times a day to once every day or two. Everything just works, and keeps me on track and informed. Kudos on building a killer product @lunchbag !
Jen
@heliostatic So cool to hear! Thank you for your support from the beginning, Ben! πŸ™Œ
Zach Waterfield
Congrats on the launch @lunchbag! I have struggled to find the right budgeting app as a person who does and a lot of multi-currency spending. I signed up this morning and can honestly say so far this is the best solution I have come across. The UX is clear and concise, the onboarding flow is πŸ”₯, and the intuitive logic around grouping and re-occurring charges is very well done. Also supporting πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦'s makes it just that much better (sending this from over in Waterloo).
Jen
@zlwaterfield That is awesome, I'm glad to hear Lunch Money meets your needs! Thank you so much for the support, and hello from a fellow UW alum πŸ‘‹!
nahtnam
I'm a YNAB user (that just happens to be what I use), but I have tried lunch money. I can't express how well built and smooth the entire app is. Its probably a year or two old but its already significantly better than mint and close to YNAB in overall finish. Honestly worth a fair shot especially if YNAB is not your thing
Jen
@nahtnam That's so great to hear, thank you for your support! πŸ˜„
Ashley H.
I've been using Spendee for awhile and I feel like it suits my needs quite perfectly, but I'm open up for better alternative out there if there's any. So I've just checked out Lunch Money and felt like it's really promising, I do have to point this one out - Lunch Money is the only app that allows me to export my CSV file successfully without hassles(I've tried plenty of those popular budgeting apps before). I do use my budgeting app on my phone for convenience, so not having an native app is the only major drawback that's keeping me from switching to Lunch Money altogether. I'm really looking forward to see Lunch Money coming to the App Store, I love how simple it is, and great job! :)
Jen
@liching_hoe Hi Ashley, thanks for taking the time to try out Lunch Money and for the feedback! Glad to hear CSV export worked seamlessly for you, and hopefully we will be on the App Store soon!
Blake Burch
I've been using Lunch Money since January as a replacement for Mint, which I had been using since 2010! I got tired of not having the level of control I needed over categorizing my transactions, which meant that my "budgeting" was just verifying I wasn't going over a total amount at the end of every month. With complex custom rules, easy transaction grouping/splitting, and detailed analysis, Lunch Money put me back in control and gives me better visibility into our spending. Plus, I no longer have to fend off the ads for financial products or the constant false alarm emails that warn me about "Upcoming Bills" or "Large Transactions". Jen has been incredibly responsive to requests and bugs. She's always churning out new, important features and the product feels way more polished than its competitors. I truly don't know how she stays so attentive and productive as a solo founder. Looking forward to seeing how Lunch Money shapes up over the next few years! Congrats on the 2.0 launch @lunchbag !
Jen
@blakeburch_ > I truly don't know how she stays so attentive and productive as a solo founder. Ah, I don't know either but I'm sure glad it comes off that way! πŸ˜‚ Thank you for the support and the incredible review, Blake! πŸ˜„
Galen Vinter
I was a long time Mint user because I felt I had no other options. YNAB wasn't quite for me either but I had always been looking for an app that could replace Mint for transaction review and budgeting especially. When I listened to Jen on Indie Hackers Podcast I was pumped it give Lunch Money a try. After a test run, I was 100% in. I've made feature requests and asked questions and have always gotten a prompt, thoughtful response from Jen. It's also incredible how many new features she's released. Anyways, I'm a huge fan, I'm happy to pay for an annual subscription, and I can't wait for the bright future ahead of Lunch Money. Thanks @lunchbag !
Jen
@gvinter Thanks for the kind words, Galen! So happy to have you on board πŸ˜„
Eduardo Sasso
Hey Jen fantastic work. I've been a loyal user for about four months. Launch Money gets pretty close to the app I always wanted to build and its already much better than Mint for my use cases. Keep up the good work.
Dayton Mills
Hi Jen, as a dually πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈIt's nice to see the multi currency support and even being able to pay in either CAD/USD. Have tried a lot of finance products, this one looks pretty close to what I do in my spreadsheets, will give it a whirl.
Jen
@daytonmills Sounds great, let me know if you have any questions during your trial!
Roman Tsegelskyi
Congrats @lunchbag ! I have been using LunchMoney for about 3 month now, really great product. Really looking forward to see how the product keep evolving
Jen
@romants Awesome! Thanks Roman!
Radek Pazdera
Lunch Money looks fantastic! Great to see an indie maker challenge much larger competitors in this space, and doing it in a sustainable way. If you'd like to know more about how Jen built the product, check out her recent interview with @csallen on the Indie Hackers Podcast: https://www.indiehackers.com/pod... Congrats on the launch, @lunchbag !
Jen
@radekpazdera Thanks for the support and the plug! πŸ˜„
Tim Sneath
I've used and experimented with a wide variety of budgeting tools over the last few years, and Lunch Money hits the sweet spot of ease of use, feature richness and flexibility. I used YNAB for years, but their opinionated approach to budgeting became too restrictive for me. Tiller Sheets is immensely powerful but required too much setup work on my side to get value out of it. I'm now a happy subscriber to Lunch Money and think it deserves a lot more attention.
Jen
@timsneath That is so wonderful to hear. Thank you for your support!
Steve Klebanoff
YNAB wasn't for me, and I've been using Tiller Money Feeds for Google Sheets for a while. I really like the flexibility of Tiller -- it's super nice to just literally have everything in a big spreadsheet. That being said, I do miss some of the conveniences of having a web-based interface. I'd like to give this a try.
Jen
@steveklbnf Hi Steve, feel free to reach out if you have any questions as you're trying out Lunch Money!
Yann
Such a lovely product! It would be incredibly wonderful if we could self-host it, but this is probably not on your roadmap?
Jen
@yapret1 Thank you! It's not on the roadmap, and this is the first time I've gotten this feature request. If local/privacy-first is important to you, I suggest you check out Actual Budget :)
Manuela Venezia Odell
I'm definitely going to check this out. I have never really liked any of the budget apps or tools out there but this one sounds promising as I'm also a digital nomad! Congrats on the launch!
Jen
@manuela_venezia_odell Thanks Manuela! Let me know if you have any questions!
Joe Rhew
I've been using this product for just less than a month and love it already. I've tried Mint and YNAB, but they ultimately didn't last for one reason or another. With Lunch Money, everything just works as it should and it strikes the perfect balance between being packed with super useful features and intuitive UX. I especially love the query function which was recently rolled out, which lets you build customized line charts to find patterns in your spending! Amazing job so far and please keep it up, Jen!
Jen
@joe_rhew Thanks for the support, Joe! πŸ˜„
Janice Kwan
10/10 would recommend. Jen is amazing!!! Have loved using lunchmoney to help with monthly budgeting. It makes so much more sense for us and gets us to look at our numbers more regularly. I've always found it challenging to just pick a number that will apply for every month when there are so many things that change month to month in our setup. It works with multiple currencies and is super easy to use which helps a lot. I switched over from mint and it was so simple and it's cute too *bonus ^__^
Jen
@ceelum Thank you for your continuous support, Janice!!! πŸ₯°