Moneystack - Visualize your finances with AI

@duncan_hamra1 Hey there! Congrats on launching TryMoneyStack! A free and simple tool for visualizing finances sounds very useful. Here are some questions and how I can help: - How does TryMoneyStack ensure the security and privacy of user financial data? - Does TryMoneyStack offer options for importing data from existing budgeting tools or exporting data for further analysis? As a developer, I'm interested in the technical aspects of data storage and security. If those align with my skills, I might be able to contribute to future development. Overall, TryMoneyStack seems like a promising tool for easy financial visualization. Exploring data security measures, data import/export options, and the feasibility of your feature ideas (AI, interest, etc.) could enhance its value. I'd be happy to see how TryMoneyStack evolves and potentially contribute my skills if relevant!

@max_savonin1 Hi Max 👋 Thanks for the comment and your kind offer to help. 1. We use Memberstack for all of our data storage and user accounts. It's SOCII compliant and all data is encrypted (twice) on it's way to the frontend. So no worries there. 2. And we don't have any import options. That said, if someone does have data somewhere else that they want to import we would be happy to help with the migration. If we get enough demand for any particular import then we would consider adding an automated means of getting that data into Moneystack. We're a small team with a pretty diverse skillset. We don't have any immediate plans to expand the team, but I really do appreciate your offer to help. Huge compliment 🙏

@georgestrunin thank you! At the moment it's not possible, but how would you see this looking? It's something we can think about :)

@georgestrunin Ooo love this idea! The closest available solution might be to export your finances, upload to your favorite AI, and have it provide you with those averages and categories? That said, I'd love to get your take on something. I was testing out other tools and found that the budget meant the most to me when I took the time to enter each category and $ myself. If the tool recommended them to me, it felt foreign or harder to feel in someway. Curious if that resonates with anyone else?

@duncan_hamra1 Hi Duncan! I really liked your suggestion — it seems like a really elegant solution for my case. My MVP, following your advice, looks like this: two sheets in Google Sheets. The first sheet has the bank export, and the second one has unique transaction parties and transaction type (credit/debit), the category suggested by AI, and an optional corrected category since AI can make mistakes and sometimes needs a bit of tweaking. I don't have major doubts since I can check the categories that seem off to me. Thanks for the suggestion and best of luck with developing Moneystack ❤️

@georgestrunin What a fantastic update message! Thanks for letting me/us know what is working for you. I hope lots of people find this this thread and it helps them 😁 Thank you for the luck and kind words!

@semanser Thank you!! At the moment, Moneystack is all manual - the main purpose right now isn't so much to track ALL your expenses, rather it's to track your general spending and get an idea of when you can make new decisions/purchases. That being said, the idea of automating it would really help you get a more accurate idea of what your spending is.

@semanser Same!! Anytime I tried to perfectly reflect my finances I would give up after a few months. Tried google sheets, YNAB, and few others. My recommendation for Moneystack is go with big categories and rough averages. Just enter the big expenses like housing, food, travel, retirement, etc. and then lump everything else into "other spending" or "credit card spending." So there's no need to worry about capturing every subscription or cup of coffee. You can focus on the BIG things (wedding, retirement, house, college, etc) and get a feel for if/when they will be financially possible. The goal of this tool is to enable you to create general forecast and to get a feel for where you are heading. Example: If you guess $3k for your total monthly spending and find after a few months you're actually spending is closer to $4k then you can update the model and learn what that actual spending means for your goals. I feel like I can see the forest for the trees 😁 Moneystack shows me the big picture and I use other tools to track/manage my actual spending.

@kyrylosilin At the moment we don't, but if it's something people want, maybe we can look into it!!

@kyrylosilin Thank you 🎉 I personally love the idea, but I'm not sure if we need it yet. I reeeeeally like that my Moneystack plans only have a few rows and I can quickly get a feel for my finances at a glance. So if we do start pulling in more data from the bank/credit card API's I'd want them to appear in a new tab/page. I update my plans every few months and I don't love manually updating my bank accounts. It would be nice if I could pull those numbers in automatically 🤔 So many fun new features to explore!

@h_henry thank you very much! The AI allows you to create new plans (or templates for plans) off nothing but a sentence :) All your data is stored only to your account and can only be accessed by you.

@h_henry What a lovely comment 😊 Thanks, Henry and I'm happy to see you're as excited as we are! +1 to Julian's answer about AI. Here's a little video I made while testing yesterday. (There's no audio) https://www.loom.com/share/90305... And all of your personal/financial data is stored in Memberstack (another product we own). All the data is encrypted several times and we're SOC II compliant so you don't have to worry about us or anyone else getting to see what you enter here. 💪

@blankwebdev Thank you so much!! Happy to hear if you have any requests, and how you like the tool :D

@blankwebdev Let us know what you think of the demo 😁 If you're interested maybe we could do a little user interview/product tour live on a call. I'm super excited to hear what you think (good, bad, etc).

@dylan_loveday_powell Glad you're enjoying it!

@glen_dsouza_1 Thanks Glen! At the moment, the goal with Moneystack isn't for people to track every single expense, rather it's for them to enter in a rough version of their usual expenses to see how much money they will have over time. This is great for overall planning, but I do agree that some way to automate/simplify the adding of expenses could lead to something else really valuable

@charles_ haha same! Thankfully things at @memberstack_team are going really well, so we're able to sponsor/fund this project ourselves. Our costs are super low so we plan to keep this free forever. Let us know what you think!

@sherrylpatton Hurrah! So glad you're enjoying it 😁 Adding a currency selector shouldn't be too hard for us. I'll chat it over with the team and see what we can do 😁 If you have any other feedback for us (good or bad) do let us know. Thanks!

@enyi_bassey Woohoo!! So happy to hear it And I know what you mean. If I had a dollar for every time I've googled "how to build a chart in excel" 🤣

@mercy_james3 Exactly!! I understand the pull toward adding more and more and more, but I just get lost in it all. We're hoping that by keeping things simple we'll be able to make financial literacy more accessible to more people. Thanks for the kinds words 😊

@heynaitik Woohoo! Thanks, Naitik 😁 And me too! We've set things up so that they're pretty easy to create and share. Hoping we can get some traffic coming into the site over time as we add more and more for particular situations, career paths, locations, etc.

@belltyler @bradycassidy Woohoo!! Thanks, Brady 😁

@yaniv_ben_hemo1 Thank you 🎉 I'd like o experiment with automatic data population in the future 👍 We know folks will need to be able to manually edit everything, so we're starting with the more foundational building blocks, launching, and then improving as we go 😁 That said, I'm curious to see how helpful pulling data from elsewhere will be. Since these projections are future facing they might be thrown off by actual past data. I.e. I just bought a house so my expenses have spiked. Instead of ending the numbers that I believe are correct right away I'd need to connect my banks, credit cards, etc. look at the trend lines, and then manually update the numbers so they capture my expected expenses. I know that's not the case for everyone, so I'm excited to experiment more around this.