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Comment by GeoSoft | Hacker News Reader

I've been building a landing page for Glance (https://glance-fi.app/) to figure out whether anyone actually wants this before I go deep on it.

It's a finance app (I know — another one, stay with me here) that skips budgeting entirely, instead tracking spending and trends.

It learns your spending patterns and flags anomalies — DoorDash doubled, weekly spending is above normal, a subscription you forgot about is still charging you, etc.

I've noticed a lot of coworkers and friends who earn a good living and don't have a desire to account for every penny. They know they should save, they put money in retirement accounts, and they don't want the complexity of a Monarch, Copilot, YNAB etc — they just want to have a handle on their spending.

I’m as interested in product feedback as website feedback tbh, given this crowd I figure I can get some good tips. Either way, would appreciate a look at the site.

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I like that idea in concept - I’ve often felt similarly about budgeting apps. Many of them feel targeted either at low income / high debt people (who need strict control to manage their way out), or at people who have a strong interest in optimising their finances.

I’m trying to find a middle ground though I think. I’m not strongly acquisitive - but want to be sensible about my finances. There needs to be a purpose to tracking and allocating - so I’d want intelligent prompting (e.g “you could easily move £x to a higher rate account each month and maintain a balance that will meet your outgoings”), as well as answering my own queries. I’ve seen that promise in other products - but it’s nearly always in a free product that uses those prompts to sell you financial products. I’d personally much rather pay for impartiality.

Thanks for the nuanced reply!

To my mind, the main purpose of the tracking is to quickly answer the question "am I overspending". I can definitely see that quickly extending to "what do I do with my money" though.

The point about impartiality definitely resonates - this was always something I found distasteful when Mint was still around (RIP).

This looks really cool! One thing that can help a lot early on is seeing how people actually use the landing page, not just if they click. Stuff like session replays or heatmaps can show where people get stuck[0], what grabs attention, and what’s actually getting across your message. It’s surprisingly useful for figuring out product-market fit before building too much.

[0] https://uxwizz.com

Thanks for checking it out and for sharing the advice! Did you build this? I'll give it a look!

Yeah, been working on it for... 14 years. Wow, time flies

that is the great idea, I just wonder how did you do the connection to the bank / credit card provider, how can we ensure the security?

Thanks! Please sign up if you're interested!

The connections are all managed by Plaid right now.

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