Hey HN People,

I know it's 2025, and you might be wondering why there's a need for a personal finance web app. I'd like to share my story and why I created lit.Money.

During COVID, I started actively managing my finances, primarily optimizing for FIRE and monitoring my progress. There are apps in India, but I didn't like their UI. I don't like to exchange messages or call with accountant for bank details or transaction queries. I also wanted a simple way to view my partner's and family's finances in one place. I considered Copilot, but it wasn't available in India. While there are 1 or 2 good apps available, none offer financial view sharing with partners, family, or accountants.

I wanted a simple, user-friendly web app, so I built lit.money (currently available as a web app).

Some key features: - View all your data on a single screen, including the number of transactions and accounts - Delete all your data with a single click (no need to contact support or wait) - "Finspace" -> a financial space where you can share your finances with partners, family, or accountants with customizable permissions (read/write) and account visibility - Easily bulk edit transactions and export data

I'm not trying to create the next big thing, just a simple project that provides real value. I would greatly appreciate your feedback! There's a DEMO MODE available to try it easily, or if you're busy, you can check out some videos (thanks to my wife, she made them): https://www.youtube.com/@litmoneyapp

Scrolled through first half of the page, learned that this is a web app that allows me to "see my money", that it's private, "makes things simple", and that it "revolutionizes financial management".

Is it really so hard to explain what your product is on the landing page? It's not just this app, it's most of the products promoted on HN. Also every other cloud app promises privacy until private equity shows up.

I was looking for a budgeting app about a month ago to replace my old usage of Mint and came across Lunch Money, been happy with it so far.

https://lunchmoney.app/

I use Rocket Money, it's free for me because I have a loan with them but I think I would still pay for it. The reason why I don't use other apps is syncing, if I have to manually sync or upload my data, I am out - it takes too much time. Personal Capital was another app that had pretty good syncing , but I haven't used them since I switched to Rocket.

Your landing page tells me so little about your app features that I am not even interested in trying it out. You have a lot of competition in this space. It's great to hear about my data being protected but that's not good enough if it doesn't have good features compared to the alternatives.

I have used lit.money, and I absolutely love it! Thank you, Mihir, for building something unique and user-friendly. I know the plans you have for this incredible piece of software are big, and I wish you nothing but the best.

A very similar site was launched right here approx. 18 years ago. Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=54658

Really like the font on your landing page!

Indeed, it makes finance simple. I used it to handle my personal finance and share data with accoutant.

Best luck

Is there a self hostable version of something like this?

It's interesting to see cloud service after cloud service launch that promises "never to sell your data".

I'm working on a similar thing, except making sure we can actually live up to that promise: that means making the software entirely feasible to run on-prem (i.e. on your own computer), on your own cloud infrastructure, or provided by a third-party provider of your choice. (We chose AGPL3 to avoid the obvious problems with third party hosting trying to add features or change things and then locking you into their platform.)

Of course, this takes a bit more effort, and some things like Plaid are nearly impossible to use when self-hosted, but we've found some pretty good workarounds for that.

Congrats on the launch OP.

Other's have already covered this so for you (OP) this will be redundant, but I do want to chime in regarding the general trend of apps/services everywhere (not just here on HN) focusing too much on the "Sell" of how their mcguffin will improve my life, but not actually saying what the heck their mcguffin actually is/does. To return to the post at hand, as an example, I'd change the byline uptop to say:

> An ethically designed financial management app to be the private and simple way to see your money, finally.

That maintains your pitch while also saying upfront and uptop in the first 6 words what it is/does.

Next, I'm not trying to be negative here, but rather acknowledge a very real problem that others have touched on and that anyone (myself included) launching any product will face in the current era:

Best Intentions != Best Practices. Security is hard. Earning trust is even harder. Especially when it comes to money. It's doubly difficult in early days as building out an app while maintaining security and respecting privacy is no minor task (even if "easy", it's still often tedious and easy to make mistakes), and in the context of finance/banking, there's unfortunately a large target on the app/services's proverbial back and impetus for users to have a far more critical and unforgiving eye given the potential fallout of someone leveraging or publishing an exploit.

There's also the ever looming potential of the original team selling the company/product/service to someone else (eg, Private Equity) who - despite claims to the contrary - rarely share the same ethos or respect for their newly acquired users as the founder/founding team does/did.

As to why people tend to be critical/suspicious: See another recent HN post "Everyone Knows your Location[0]" regarding all the practically systemic and endemic ways that applications/services expose/harvest data, and how difficult it can be to be aware of, mitigate and protect against these things. Exploiting user faith/data is unfortunately the norm now, not the exception, thus people's suspicions.

Wish you luck OP, because the market absolutely could use a privacy/user respecting app in this space.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716704

Invite code: iamvip