Lunch Money?

KINDAYou can build the valuable core, but the established product has meaningful operational complexity. Pick one narrow promise for v1.

BUILD FIRST

One specific customer type and one primary use case
A vertical slice that completes the main job without manual workarounds
Visible limits, review steps, and a fallback when an external dependency fails

LEAVE FOR LATER

Broad third-party integrations
High-scale collaboration, syncing, and permissions
Automation that can cause harm without human review

RESEARCH NOTES

What this tool actually does.

Checked 2026-09-06

Lunch Money is a personal-finance dashboard for bringing together accounts and transactions, budgeting, and tracking spending.

SOURCES

lunchmoney.app

RESEARCHED BUILD PROMPT

Give this to your coding agent.

Build a focused replacement for Lunch Money. Do not copy the original brand, proprietary assets, name, logo, UI, or copy; create an original visual system.

Build the narrow workflow: import or enter personal transactions, categorize them into a budget, and review spending over time.

Requirements
- support account, transaction, category, budget, and recurring-item schemas
- provide CSV import, rules for categorization, reconciliation state, and editable transaction details
- show monthly budget/spending views with explicit calculations and export
- keep credentials out of source code and include delete/retention controls

Out of scope for v1
- bank credentials and live aggregation without a provider
- investment execution or regulated advice
- fraud detection and financial guarantees

Use a small React/TypeScript app with a portable JSON or SQLite data model, explicit loading/empty/error states, and adapters around external services. Seed realistic demo data so the core flow works without paid credentials. Include a README with setup, environment variables, data model, implementation decisions, privacy behavior, testing instructions, and important limitations.

Visit the official product page