[PROGRESS THREAD] Building a Personal Finance App – From MVP to Market

[Alexandrel]

Hi everyone,


I’ve decided to dip my toes into entrepreneurship, and this is my official progress thread to document the journey of building and launching a personal finance app.

Why I’m Doing This​

I don’t want to rely all my life on being an employed engineer. A while back I brainstormed 100+ business ideas and picked this one because it solves a problem I personally face. I used to track everything in Excel, but it became clunky and painfully slow with long loading times.

So I thought: why not build the finance app I wish I had? Even if it doesn’t succeed commercially, I’ll at least have something that works for me. But my real goal here is to create something useful for others and see if I can build a business out of it.

What the App Does​

The idea is to give people a clear vision of their finances without unnecessary complexity.

• A transactions screen where you can see all your transactions with daily and period totals for income, expense, and net.
• Multi-currency support with automatic conversion so totals are always meaningful.
• Recurring transactions (e.g. subscriptions, rent) that get added automatically.
• A stats screen (still in development) to visualize where money comes from and where it goes.
• Accounts tracking, where you’ll be able to see historical and real-time trends of your assets’ value.

I’m deliberately not adding budgeting or objectives (at least not yet).

Progress So Far​

• The MVP is well underway. I’ve been using it for my own personal finances for about a month (migrated everything over from Excel).
• Core functionality is working, and it feels solid enough for daily use.
• Still lots to polish and optimize, especially as the transactions screen got slower after I added currency conversion.

Pricing & Monetization – Where I Need Advice​

This is where I’d love feedback.

My current thinking:

• Free trial of the full app for ~3 months.
• After that:
  • $2.99/month, or
  • $24.99/year, or
  • $29.99 lifetime access.
• If people don’t want to pay, they can still export their data and take it with them.

But I’m unsure whether to:

• Start charging from day one, or
• Offer it completely free at the beginning to attract early users and get reviews.

Next Steps​

• Optimize & polish the transactions screen.
• Build out the stats screen properly.
• Add asset history trends.
• Improve UI and user experience overall.
• Implement subscription logic (and figure out how to handle blocking when unpaid).
• Add analytics to track usage meaningfully.
• Plan a marketing strategy (still a big unknown for me).

Time Invested So Far​

I’ve tracked my time, and so far this project has taken me ~523 hours (that's 13 weeks at 40hrs/week, ~3 months):

• Intro & research + First tries with ChatGPT: ~17 hours
• Udemy Flutter course: ~100 hours
• Building the app itself: ~394 hours
• Creating socials: ~12 hours

Way more than I thought it would take...

Lessons from Using AI for Coding​

• Great for some things, terrible for others. The better you already know how to code, the better AI becomes as a tool.
• One big downside: I’ve learned less than I would have if I coded everything manually. Early on, I learned the basics myself with small AI help. Later, I went all-in with Cursor, and while progress was faster (sometimes), I became more reliant on AI instead of building my own skills.
  

My Questions for You​

• What’s the best pricing model in today’s app market?
• Should I prioritize early traction (free users/reviews) or revenue from the start?
• Any thoughts on how best to market a finance app like this?
• Happy to hear advice on how to make the app faster when fetching a lot of data and making calculations on the go.
• Are there pitfalls or opportunities I might be missing?

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I’ll keep this thread updated as I make progress. Excited to share this journey and to hear your thoughts, feedback, and advice.
Happy to give more technical details if you ask.
Screenshots coming soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

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[Alexandrel]

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[Alexandrel]

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