Looking for beta testers for Ridge — AI-powered personal finance app that learns your habits (Italian bank sync, lifetime access for participants)
Hey everyone,
I'm writing this post to share something I built for myself, but that I think solves a pretty common pain.
I don't know about you, but I started tracking expenses, budgets and projections back in university — with more or less well-built Excel sheets I'd update periodically. Then I got tired of it, and my visibility into my own financial situation went out the window.
That's why I built Ridge: I wanted one single place to see accounts, transactions, budget and portfolio — with coverage for Italian banks — without having to maintain a spreadsheet every week.
Great, but why this post?
Simply put, I want to find out if this is useful to just me or to other people too. So I'm looking for beta testers. I started with my personal circle — there are about ten users on the platform right now — but I figured I needed to go beyond that to get feedback with less bias.
Ok, but why should you care about Ridge over other personal finance apps?
Most apps I've tried are passive dashboards: they show you charts, then leave the interpretation to you. Ridge is different — it's a proactive AI assistant built on your actual numbers, that learns who you are over time.
1. Memory
Ridge remembers what you tell it. If you explain in a chat that you're trying to save 20% of your salary, that you have a recurring investment in an MSCI World ETF, or that a certain expense is one-off and shouldn't count toward your budget — you won't need to explain it again next time. It already knows. And soon it'll be able to set those things up in the app on your behalf.
You can also ask it directly: "What do you remember about me?" to see what it has stored about your financial profile.
2. Chat with your money ("Ask Ridge")
A chat connected to your platform data: transactions, budget, reports and portfolio. You can run analyses like:
- "How much did I spend on restaurants this month vs last month?"
- "Which recurring expenses are missing this month?"
- "How did my portfolio do last quarter?"
It doesn't respond with generic advice — it responds with your numbers, and with the context it has built up about you over time. The most useful question I ask it is:
"Can I afford X?" — Ridge answers by analyzing how my actual spending compares to budget and what the coming months look like based on tracked recurring and planned income and expenses.
3. Daily nudge
Every morning at 8:00 Ridge analyzes my situation and sends a concise observation via email — an anomaly, a trend, something I might have missed. One insight about my specific profile, not spam, and unsubscribable at any time.
The rest of the features:
🏦 Bank sync via GoCardless — major Italian banks supported. Transactions sync automatically every morning.
📊 Dashboard with net worth, Sankey chart for income/expenses, and charts by category, account and tag.
📈 Portfolio with real-time quotes and full trade history.
📋 Budget — plan income and expenses by category on a monthly basis. Ridge tracks recurring transactions (rent, salary, subscriptions) and alerts you if one that was expected hasn't shown up yet. You can also add one-off planned transactions — a bonus, an extraordinary expense — and see them integrated into the plan.
📊 Reports — monthly income statement, balance sheet, net worth over time.
A note on security and data
I know this question comes up naturally with this kind of app — you're sharing sensitive financial data. A few things worth making explicit:
- I never see your bank credentials. Bank sync goes entirely through GoCardless (Nordigen), a regulated European provider authorized as an AISP. Ridge only receives your transactions and balances — your credentials never touch my servers.
- Data is hosted in Europe on EU infrastructure.
- GDPR: you can export all your data at any time, and delete your account with full removal of all associated data. No residual data.
- Secure sessions with httpOnly cookies and server-side encryption.
So why should you join the beta?
Simply put, here's what I can offer:
- Completely free access during the beta
- Lifetime access if and when the product becomes paid — anyone testing now will never pay
If you're interested, sign up for the waitlist directly from the landing page, or drop a comment or DM me — all good ways to get an access code.
Ridge — ridgemoney.xyz