Launched a budgeting app myself after years of financial stress
Hey IH! 👋
I'm Jamal, and I just launched Waypoint Budget!
The problem:
I was stuck in the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. Tried Mint, YNAB, all the big apps but they were either too expensive or required too much manual work. I needed something dead simple.
What I built:
Auto-sync your bank → AI categorizes everything → see where your money goes. No spreadsheets, no manual entry.
Free tier + paid plans ($8-12/month).
Current status:
- 10th paying customer last week 🎉
- Bootstrapped, building nights/weekends
- Just fixed an annoying Plaid integration bug
What I'm struggling with:
Getting people to actually USE it vs. just download and forget. Budgeting apps have terrible retention.
What would make you stick with a budgeting app? Genuinely curious.
Happy to chat about fintech, Plaid, or indie hacking!
Fellow budgeting app builder here (Money Me - money-me.com). Congrats on 10 paying customers, that milestone matters.
On your retention question: I think most budgeting apps lose people because they answer the wrong question. "Where did your money go" is a review task - you do it once, feel bad, close the app. The apps that stick answer "what can I spend today without breaking next month" - that's a question people ask daily.
Took the opposite approach to you - no bank linking at all, fully manual. Turns out there's a real segment who actively don't want to hand over bank credentials. Different customers, but the retention problem is the same: make it worth opening tomorrow, not just today.
Congrats on the launch, looks solid. How are you currently thinking about acquiring early users and gathering feedback?