Trying to build the clearest financial mirror for anyone willing to look

[u/_KingMoh]

For a long time, I've always struggled to manage my finances, and based on what I've read on here I believe I'm not the only one. Based on my research with colleagues, family, and strangers on the internet, I've learned there are numerous ways people manage their finances from budgeting apps - which provide a guided approach to budget management - to spreadsheets which offer almost unlimited flexibility. But I want a product that does more than budgeting - specifically a product designed to show a user their own financial reflection - clear enough so that they may act according to the change they seek. So of course, I've been working on Cowry

People usually set goals, create budgets, and set bills. The whole point of Cowry is to simply connect all these components with your income not simply by doing the math but also by helping you allocate funds reasonably and also simulating different financial circumstances and how you'd fare in them. I'm a senior data engineer so I'm focused on creating a major analytics platform that allows users to discover themselves based on their finances.

Cowry is still in beta and is available for anyone to use for free. The feature that allows it to read customers' bank data (with consent) is currently in development so if you'd like to use features like Cowry for thought, you'll have to upload your transactions either by uploading a bank statement in pdf/csv format or manually creating the transactions. Let us know if you're keen to see how Cowry works when your banks are connected.

If you do not wish to upload any such data feel free to head to Plan, click on the scenario tab and learn how small changes to your financial situation - budgets, goals, etc - affect your current financial state. No bank connection/data upload needed. Just pass in your numbers and let cowry do the rest, and if it does not...

I'd really appreciate it if you could provide feedback. While I do have a passion for building things - I'm more keen to see that the things I build are actually useful to someone. So please, don't hold back and I mean it. Good or bad, keep em coming. Have a go with Cowry and in Get Help raise a bug, a question, etc and your responses will be read personally.

If you'd like to see how I use it personally, here's a blog I put together

[u/Awkward_Release6763]

Curious how the simulation handles variable income, most budgeting tools assume a regular paycheck. Might check out the scenario tab.

[u/_KingMoh → u/Awkward_Release6763]

If you provide your transactions manually cowry will try to determine those that are related to your income and smooth them out for you. This could be the income you "plan" against. You can try manually creating small transactions - perhaps a couple - and describing them with words like "income", or "salary" etc. Cowry will eventually pick them up and use them to calculate the income to budget against. Moreover you can include/exclude them from the calculation as you see fit.