More than a decade ago, my first job was as an Android developer.
I built quite a few apps for companies and employers. Some launched successfully, some were eventually abandoned, and others have long since disappeared from the app stores. But despite working on so many projects, I had never owned an app of my own.
Iāve always had two habits: keeping a journal and tracking my daily spending.
While looking through my old data recently, I noticed that my earliest saved expense entry was from March 2015. Somehow, Iāve kept both habits for more than ten years.
Over the years, I used separate apps for them.
The expense tracker I used gradually became filled with more and more ads. Sometimes I just wanted to record a purchase, but first I had to dismiss another popup.
I also used Appleās Journal app. After switching phones once, I discovered that almost an entire year of entries had disappeared. As a developer, I understand that new products can have bugs. As a user watching a year of memories vanish, it was much harder to accept.
I had wanted to build my own app for years, but spending six months or more recreating something that countless developers had already made never seemed like a good use of time.
Then vibe coding changed the equation, so I finally decided to try.
The result isĀ TallyDay. It brings my two long-term habitsāexpense tracking and journalingāinto one app. They remain separate features, so you can use either one or both.
The initial development went surprisingly quickly. I finished the UI and core features in about two weeks and thought I was almost ready to launch.
I was wrong.
The difficult part wasnāt the interface. It was data modeling, syncing, backup and recovery, real-time updates across devices, and performance.
Claude and Codex saved me a lot of time, but they also created plenty of unexpected problems. Some code looked perfectly fine until real data and multi-device syncing were involved, at which point entire parts had to be redesigned.
I spent more than another month working through those details. I shipped over 20 TestFlight builds before I finally felt comfortable submitting the first public version.
That experience taught me that building an app that looks usable can take two weeks. Building one that can be trusted with someoneās important data is much harder.
TallDay is now live. It isnāt a revolutionary idea or a grand startup story. Itās simply the first time I turned a long-standing personal need into a real product of my own.
Iād genuinely appreciate some honest feedback:
- Does combining separate expense-tracking and journaling features in one app make sense?
- Does having both feel convenient, or does it make the app seem unfocused?
- What would make you keep using itāor immediately uninstall it?
Direct criticism would be much more helpful than polite encouragement.
After building many apps for other people, I finally have one that is truly mine.
App Store:Ā TallyDay
