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Comment by roughfalls | Hacker News Reader

This looks great and I'm inclined to give it a try. But do you have a privacy policy? I try to avoid services that sit between me and my financial institutions, as I worry they're building analytics off my spending patterns and selling it to third parties.

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A very valid concern! Our Privacy Policy is listed here: https://lunchmoney.app/privacy

A promise we make from the beginning is we're definitely not ever going to be selling any of your data. We don't have an incentive to since we're selling the service directly to the user as a subscription.

I felt the same way, and it's part of why I made spendweek.com (a privacy-first, easy-to-use competitor to Lunch Money, YNAB with a single focus on saving money instead of keeping track of all your accounts). I am sort of proud of my privacy policy, so it's a link right at the top of the home page.

Here's the basic manifesto of the SpendWeek framework in case anyone's interested: https://www.spendweek.com/blog/you-need-a-different-budget/

There are more than 4 weeks in a month, should you not divide by 4.33?

Nice domain and nice concept. I too am among those with a home-grown approach to managing the budget. Mine is more of a spending journal than it is about planning or reconciling the entire budget, with motivations similar to those who would have a meal journal. I focus on the decision making process and self-evaluate spending according to my budget and my overall values.

My approach won't appeal to a lot of folks, but there are dozens of us who find it super useful: https://www.spendlight.com/#how-it-works

We're on the same page regarding privacy. Except for taking money for the subscription, I keep my hands off bank accounts. And for those wanting a complete air gap, there's always the printable paper version: https://www.spendlight.com/download/paper-spending-journal

Yes! This is awesome. Looking at all the budget software that uses monthly time frames, I was wondering why no one uses weekly. This quote is a great way to say it, "Even though most bills are paid monthly, discretionary spending is more naturally tracked on a weekly basis."

Ages ago, my tool tried to do both weekly and monthly but then I had the realization out that almost all of the monthly items were not ones I was having trouble with in the budget. The fixed expenses were (obviously) fixed. And consumption-based utilities would vary month to month, and that was easy enough to track and reconcile every so often.

In other words, the budget would get "broken" more often in the week-to-week habits than the monthly ones... hence, the resulting focus of my tool.

A quick answer to this is that 365 doesn't divide into 7 so cleanly. In any case, the use case for weekly budgets is definitely strong :)

Cool approach! Best of luck!

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