A year ago, I posted the first version. Since then, the app has matured significantly with two major updates:
1. Multi-platform Support: Now available on Mobile (iOS), Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux), and as a Self-hosted Docker image. (Android coming soon).
2. Addons System: We added explicit support for extensions so you can hack around, vibe code your own integrations, and customize the app to fit your needs.
The core philosophy remains the same: Always private, transparent, and open source.
But I don't think I'm willing to give up fully automated data refreshes at this point. I have too many accounts to track.
By nature of the economic system, you must interact with 3rd parties, unless you somehow live a life where you can manage to be all crypto or (increasingly harder) cash based. At that point, there is no real benefit to privacy outside of ensuring that whatever institution(s) you work with aren't doing anything odd.
I'm open to missing something here.
1– Install a piece of software and run it locally, no subscription, no cloud 2– Have to right to use a nicer app instead of a spreadsheet 3– not hand over your banking creds. Some banks will void your account insurance if you do 4– Reduce your exposure by not putting all your financial data on some startup’s servers.
I used Mint for years, and I LOVED it. Hooked it up to all my accounts, it could track purchases and spending and kept everything up to date automatically. It would remember how I categorized things.
Of course, then Intuit decided to get rid of it and force everyone to move to Credit Karma, which doesn't do the same things AT ALL. I don't care about tracking my credit scores, and I pay off all my credit cards every month, I don't need help finding a loan for anything. The only thing it does is try to offer me loans and credit cards. It doesn't have any transaction history, so it doesn't do the one thing I care about.
The decade+ of transaction history I had in Mint was just GONE. It really sucked, and I have not found a replacement yet.
I don't mind if it is hosted, or even if I have to pay for it, but I would like to be able to keep my historical data, and for it to automatically populate from my accounts, and not go away if a company decides it can't make money from it anymore.
My bank has both commercial & cultural reasons not to sell my ID & transaction history. They might still do it anyways, but it's at least plausible that they wouldn't, if only due to the harm to their reputation if it ends up in the papers.
If we want to monetize insights from aggregated data, we'd do it in-house and offer you better products. Example: Why sell your mortgage readiness data to some broker when we could source competitive mortgage offers and present them directly to you? Keep you in our ecosystem, add value to your experience, and build a revenue stream that doesn't destroy the core product.
The wealth space is crowded. Companies that burn user trust get exposed fast and die faster. The only sustainable path is treating your data like it belongs to you and not us. Any company here who doesn't get that is building on quicksand and I'd be very surprised to hear any of the larger players engaging in those practices but maybe I'm naive.
Either way, it's why we're a Fiduciary and that blankets the entire product suite.
Sell the data to whom?
At a certain point paranoia gives way to practicality.