u/iohopes

The method was never my problem. Envelopes are the only thing that ever made me feel money actually leaving my hands. Carrying them was the problem. Cash back from a return, anything I had to pay online, splitting a bill with someone, and I'd fall off it for two weeks at a time.

So I built a phone version, and the whole job was not softening the parts that make it work.

Every dollar gets assigned to an envelope when the money comes in, before the month starts spending itself. When an envelope is empty, it's empty. If you go over, you have to pull it out of another envelope on purpose, so you see exactly which one you just robbed. Entry is manual, which people tell me is the flaw. It's the point. If I don't type it, I don't feel it.

There's no bank connection and no card syncing. Nothing about credit at all.

One thing I did that Dave wouldn't have put in there. Dave would tell you the number is enough, that gazelle intensity and the goal itself should carry you. For me it didn't. So every savings goal holds a picture of what the money is for, and it sits right next to the amount. That's the part that keeps me from raiding the envelope.

For those of you doing envelopes right now: what actually makes you fall off it? For me it was never discipline, it was the logistics.

Disclosure: the app is mine. https://envelopebudget.net

I'm saving for a trip, and for a long time my method was just saying no to one thing at a time in the store. That works for about three weeks. Then it stops feeling like saving and starts feeling like going without.

What changed it was small. I keep a picture of the trip right next to the savings number, so when I put money in I'm looking at what it's for instead of a number moving from 340 to 380. Same money, completely different feeling.

The other thing was splitting my money into separate named amounts as soon as it lands instead of leaving it all in one balance. When it sits in one balance it just quietly disappears.

I ended up building this into an app because nothing I tried did it. I mostly use cash and one or two accounts, and every budgeting app I opened, YNAB included, was built for a more complicated life than mine. I wanted envelopes, a picture inside the savings goal, and nothing to connect.

What keeps you going on a savings goal after the novelty wears off? And has anyone else found that where you keep the money changes how likely you are to spend it?

Disclosure: the app is mine. https://envelopebudget.net

Writing the boring middle instead of a launch post, because that's where I actually am.

I'm not from a development background. I built a budgeting app on my own and got it into TestFlight. It's the envelope method: your money gets split into envelopes the moment it arrives instead of sitting in one balance, and the home screen widget is the entry point, so logging a spend never involves opening the app. Ten languages, six themes, all of it shipped. The product side is fine.

Recruiting was supposed to start on the 14th and it slipped to the 16th because not enough people signed up. That is the whole problem. I can build the thing and I cannot find twenty strangers who will open it.

Here's the honest scoreboard from the last few days of trying. One post was removed by a site-wide spam filter before any human read it, apparently because it had three external links and my account has 51 karma. The posts that survived got one upvote and zero comments. Titles that say "looking for testers" get scrolled past. Titles that ask a question get read. That's the sum of what I've learned, and it cost me a week.

Two things I genuinely don't know:

When you had no audience and no budget, what actually produced your first fifty users? Not the plan, the thing that worked. I keep reading advice that assumes an existing following.

Is it a mistake to run a closed beta at all at this size? I'm wondering whether I should skip straight to release and treat the first month of the App Store as the beta, since the recruiting is costing more than the feedback is worth.

Happy to answer anything about the build side, including the parts I got wrong, which is most of them. Back here with the numbers either way after the 27th.

PRODUCT

Envelope Budget, an iPhone app for the envelope method. Income gets split into envelopes the moment it arrives instead of sitting in one balance, and what's left updates as you spend. The main entry point is the home screen widget: tap an envelope and you land in the entry screen for it, so logging a $12 lunch never involves opening the app. Every savings goal has a vision board, so the picture of what you're saving for sits next to the amount you still need. Six themes, ten languages.

MARKET

People who mostly use cash, or who only deal with one or two accounts. First jobbers and anyone whose money vanishes between paydays without a story. Explicitly not people with eight cards who want automatic reconciliation.

COMPETITION

YNAB, Goodbudget, Actual Budget, and the pile of free trackers. YNAB owns the method but keeps raising its price and needs real setup time. Goodbudget is the closest direct competitor and is showing its age. My bet is that the friction that kills budgeting apps is the logging, not the budgeting, so the widget being an input surface instead of a picture of the app is the whole product.

STAGE

TestFlight, recruiting the first round of testers right now. No public launch yet, no revenue, no press. The beta runs about two weeks.

CONVERSION STRATEGY

Nothing but posts like this one. No paid acquisition, no audience, no email list worth the name. One earlier post of mine was killed by a site-wide spam filter before a human ever saw it, which tells you roughly where I am.

WHY ME

I'm not from a development background and I built and shipped this on my own. This is my first iOS app, so I want the honest version rather than the encouraging one.

LINKS

Site: https://envelopebudget.net

Beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5rTPMath

Go ahead and take it apart. The thing I most want hit: refusing bank sync forever. I think the typing is what makes you notice the spending, but that is also exactly what every abandoned budgeting app said about itself.

An envelope budgeting app for iPhone. Best if you mostly use cash, or only deal with one or two accounts — there's nothing to connect and no account to create.

Why I built it:

• Money sitting in one balance disappears without a trace. Here it gets split into envelopes the moment it comes in, and what's left updates as you spend.
• Most apps are too slow to log a $12 lunch, so you stop. Tap an envelope on the home screen widget and you're already in the entry screen for that envelope — you never have to open the app first.
• Numbers alone don't tell you why you're saying no to something. Each goal has a vision board, so the thing you're saving for sits next to the amount.
• Set a target and a deadline, and the app splits it into what you need to put in each period. You can log what you saved with a note.
• Six themes that are cute and actually readable. When the app starts feeling boring, switch to another one and keep going.
• Ten languages: English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Indonesian.

Requirements: iOS 14+ (the home screen widget needs iOS 16+).

Your data: everything is stored on your device — no account, no sync, no bank linking. You can back it up and export to CSV or PDF at any time, so what you enter during the beta stays yours after release.

Feedback: https://envelopebudget.canny.io/feedback — you can post and vote there, so I know what to build first. Comments here work too, and I reply to all of them.

Running this round for about 2 weeks. Rough edges are expected, that's the point — tell me anything that feels slow, confusing, or wrong.

More about it: envelopebudget.net

i started this with zero coding background. learning what mvp and prototype even meant feels like last week, and somehow i already shipped a thing.

it's called makecarousel. took me about a month and 20 days to build.

honestly the part that stuck with me wasn't the building. it was realizing i never actually validated the idea. i'd call what i did "discovery" at best, not validation.

here's what i mean. the first idea came from my own need. then for research i just typed carousel into reddit and tiktok and read whatever showed up. looking back i should've done it with real data but i went off vibes and reactions instead. that's still the thing i'm stuck on tbh. i know you're supposed to validate against data, i just have no idea which numbers to actually anchor on.

what i did find on reddit was people saying canva is a pain to design in, and that making carousels eats too much time. most of those posts were from like 10-17 days before i looked, so i figured ok there's demand. then i went and watched maybe 34 carousel videos on tiktok to see what was landing.

the one real lesson for me was this. think about the marketing before you design the product. i tried to nail one media angle, mine ended up being fire your content designer (took some inspiration from pieter levels, no clue if it's the right call yet).

the upside is when you do that, the actual marketing stage isn't a panic. you're not sitting there going wait which platform, what format. you already understood the pain point and built around the angle, so marketing-first actually becomes doable.

so right now i'm running reels on reddit, tiktok and instagram. format is just benchmarking whatever's getting reactions, content is pain point trigger plus how we solve it. posted my first tiktok today and yeah, no idea how it'll go. low views are fine, i just want the conversion.

even getting the first 10 people would be huge because then i can actually hear what they think.

so my real question. i can't tell if the way i'm marketing is even right. do i just keep at this for a month and see? and if there's still nothing after that, is that the sign to move on and build a different app? would love to hear how you'd play it.

https://reddit.com/link/1u03e30/video/l4oe0288716h1/player

I make a lot of carousels for my own socials, and I got sick of the only two options: spend half an hour hand-building each one in Canva and then redoing it for every aspect ratio, or use an AI tool and get something so obviously machine-made I'd never put my name on it.

So over the last few months I built my own. You give it a topic, and it researches the subject, checks the facts against real sources, writes the copy, and designs the whole thing. I spent most of that time on the design side specifically — the bar I set for myself was that you shouldn't be able to tell it's AI at a glance. That part took far longer than getting the text to generate.

That's the bit I'm actually proud of: the output looks like a person made it, not a model. Honestly that one constraint shaped the entire project.

Built solo. It's live if you want to see what it makes — happy to talk about how any piece of it works.

Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/products/makecarousel

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