I'm Building My Own Financial App: Vissu

This is the story on why I’m building a financial tracker of my own.

To begin, let’s jump for a moment to July 2023, when I was travelling to Medellin, Colombia. While going there on the plane, I was taking advantage of every bit of time, so I was programming on Vissu.app mid-flight. At that time, I was working mainly on the sign-up/reset-password/login flows.

So, while on the plane, this lady next to me asked me what I was doing, and I was explaining to her, forgive the redundancy, that I was building a financial tracker app. It went a bit like this:

“Aren’t there already many apps like that out there?” she asked.

“Yes, there are,” I replied, while continuing to focus on whatever I was doing.

“Then, why are you building another one?” the lady continued.

“Because I didn’t like the ones I’ve used so far, so I’ve decided to build my own,” I explained.

It’s really as simple as that. I’m just building something that I wanted to use, and that I thought would be useful for others.

Why Vissu?

While I have always been good at keeping tabs mentally on almost virtually everything, there came a moment in my life when I was heavily invested in Bitcoin but I didn’t know how much I had exactly invested (dollar-wise, that is).

This was a result of two things. First, using Bitcoin as a means of transferring money from Colombia to Venezuela without having to wait for hours until someone completed the transaction. Using P2P marketplaces, I was able to get money into my family’s hands pretty quickly. Second, I started to invest and buy Bitcoin as a long-term investment.

Long story short, I didn’t know exactly how much money I had put into my Bitcoin investment, so I set out to make a way to measure that.

How? Well, Excel… Or Apple Numbers, in this case, since I’m a Mac user. I got it done, but it was a big endeavour that took a couple of months to complete.

Then, I needed a better way to keep track and handle all of my finances. I thought there may be some good existing options, so I searched around:

I tried and tested almost all financial apps out there like Monefy, Lunch Money, Monarch, Wallet by Budgetbakers, etc, but while I liked some stuff, I still didn’t find all the functionalities that I’d need or expect in a financial tracker app.

I settled for using Monefy on the phone for COP and USD tracking, with 2 spreadsheets to track my crypto holdings. I originally was using an app to track crypto holdings, Blockfolio, before it was acquired by FTX and then shut down.

It was a total mess.

Soon, I grew tired of having my financial data segregated across different places… Surely, there must be a better way to handle my finances, right?

So I set out to the task of building my own app.

I decided to start building my own financial tracker! I named it Vissu, because Vissu comes from Icelandic and it means “Certainty”.

I wanted to be certain of my finances. Thus, Vissu.app was born.

The journey

I had a background in OOP, as well as C, Java, HTML, CSS from my time in college. I knew some stuff, but I had to learn a lot more and improve my skills in order to build a good app.

When I started this challenge, I chose JavaScript as the language to code in, using React and Next.JS as the libraries/frameworks.

Initially, I used ChatGPT to build some really basic versions. This was right when ChatGPT was being noticed and everyone was paying attention to it. During the span of about two weeks, I built a very simple app which had very basic account functionality. I was just learning what was possible with LLMs at that moment.

I decided to take some time to study the documentation for both React and Next.JS. It took me about 2 months. I needed to master the fundamentals if I was to build this app myself.

During this time, I tried hiring someone to help me build the app using LLMs, too, but that didn’t go very well, and after $1,000 spent, I realized that hiring someone to carry out my vision wasn’t the best idea, so I set out to do it myself; I like the way that it feels to code and build this app by myself.

Therefore, I decided to just do it all myself.

I started coding alongside ChatGPT, since LLMs were already pushing out newer versions, and I saw its potential.

Originally, it was just me using ChatGPT in my browser, then manually copying and pasting into Visual Studio Code. I had started using Copilot and it was pretty neat with Visual Studio Code.

Eventually, I learned about Cursor via X, and specifically about using Cursor with the Copilot extension added, which I already had, so I went for it!

It was the best coding decision that I’ve made in my entire coding career, aside from studying informatics back in University.

I still remember when Claude 3.5 Sonnet came out (June 2024) and it was a literal game changer on many things that could be sped up exponentially. I was able to fix a lot of stuff with it, really quickly.

I was iterating on the app way faster than I could on my own.

This has been an exciting experience and I’m happy to bring Vissu to you.

Vissu is now officially launched

Fast forward to today, and Vissu is now officially launched, and I’ve been using personally for the past eight months. You can go and check out the app here.

I continue to code Vissu by myself, and getting help from AI. This would be called, essentially, AI-assisted coding.

It took me 1.5 years to build Vissu, and I’m still working on it. It’s not just code, it’s also marketing, UI/UX, the backend, legal, and all other stuff required for an app to function.

This is an ongoing journey, but I’m happy with the progress that I’ve made so far and being able to put Vissu out there for everyone to use.

I’m not sure how this app will evolve, but I’m excited to see where it takes me, and where it will take you.

Knowing where your money is, and how it’s being spent, is a great way to start being financially literate.

If you track your finances, and you keep an eye on it all, you can find ways to enhance and improve your financial situation. Accountability begets productivity.

Vissu helps you track your finances: you can see where your money is, and how it’s being spent. It helps you plan, using budgets, and gives you a clear view of your financial situation.

Vissu helps you keep an eye on everything that you have, your house, your cash, your bank account, your stocks, your crypto, etc, under a single unified dashboard. You’ll have all of your finances on a single place.

I know that not everybody may be interested in using such type of apps, and that’s fine, since this is not for everyone. This app is meant for those who like to keep close track of everything, for those of us who like to be in complete control.

It’s not just about an app, it’s about being financially literate

I didn’t wake up one day and decided that I wanted to build an app out of the blue. I had already spent around half a year ordering my finances, getting a clear view of where the money was, of how I was spending it, and how I was investing it.

Before that, I had spent two to three years making wrong financial decisions, and I was not able to see the big picture, or to make sense of how I was expending my money.

I had to learn a lot about money, wealth, investments, psychology, and how to plan for the future. Most financial principles that I had to apply were very simple, but it was still difficult to make the change.

First, I had to spend less than I was earning monthly. Consequently, cutting expenses, re-evaluating my spending habits, and just re-organizing my budget.

Then, I had to start saving some of that money, investing it, diversifying my money, and just making sure that I was investing in a way that was aligned with my values and goals. Where I wanted to be in the future.

I paid off my debts.

I started to keep the money in my account, not spend it as soon as it hit, and instead applying the correct strategy with it in order to optimize and grow it.

After a while, having an app or a place where I could see all my finances in one place was a no-brainer. Hence, here we are.

I’m not sure if this is the best way to be financially literate, but it’s the way that I’ve chosen to be.

I’ll still continue to learn and improve my financial literacy, and I’ll continue to use Vissu to track my finances.

And I’m going to share my journey online, with everyone.

Do you want to improve your finances and try Vissu out? Go and check it out here.