Why I Built SpendMind
It started with a spreadsheet. Like most people, I tried tracking my family's spending in a shared Google Sheet — formula errors, forgotten entries, and a layout only I could understand. I looked for an app that was simple enough for my whole household to actually use, but everything I found was either bloated with features we didn't need or felt like it was designed in 2012.
So I decided to build it myself. No team. No funding. Just a developer with a problem and the stubbornness to solve it. The early days were rough — I'd spend an entire weekend building a feature, only to scrap it on Monday because it didn't feel right. The dashboard alone went through more redesigns than I can count. I'd get the layout working, then realise the numbers weren't telling the story clearly enough, and start over.
The budget reports nearly broke me. I wanted exports that people would actually want to look at — not the ugly spreadsheet dumps most apps give you. That meant building six different visual templates, getting Excel exports to use real formulas and conditional formatting instead of just pasting numbers, and making PDFs that render beautifully with proper charts and colours. There was a week where I was debugging why a currency symbol wouldn't align properly in a PDF table. A currency symbol. That's the kind of detail that goes into this app.
I'll be honest — I didn't do it entirely alone. I built SpendMind with the help of AI. Claude became my collaborator: a tireless partner I could bounce ideas off at 2am, debug stubborn issues with, and push through the kind of tedious work that usually makes solo developers quit. It didn't write the app for me — I still made every decision, designed every screen, and wrestled with every deployment — but it let one person build something that would normally take a team. That felt like a superpower.
Even getting this landing page live was an adventure. Building locally is one thing — getting everything to actually work on a production server, with compiled assets loading correctly over HTTPS, is where the real lessons live. Every bug fixed, every deployment hiccup solved, it all adds up. The app you'll use carries every one of those late nights in it.
SpendMind isn't backed by venture capital or built to chase metrics. It's built by someone who actually uses it with his own family. Every feature exists because it solves a real problem — not because it looks good on a pitch deck. Family collaboration that actually works. Savings goals you can track together. Reports that make your financial picture clear, not confusing.
I'm still building. Still improving. Still having those 2am sessions where one more fix turns into three more features. And I'd love for you to be part of the journey.