BudgetingKid / Our own MVP
We built BudgetingKid to manage pocket money in our own family, explored a commercial launch and chose to keep the product public and free. It is a working example of taking an everyday problem through implementation and a business decision.
A personal starting point
We built BudgetingKid for our own use: a practical way to manage a child's pocket money and discuss spending and saving together. The project grew into a working application that anyone can now use for free.
The product gives parents and children a shared starting point for conversations about allowances, expenses and saving.
We built the allowance-tracking application in Ruby on Rails and a separate Next.js landing page. Parents can create a child's account, set a weekly allowance, track expenses and share access with family members.
Both the application and the landing page have public source repositories, so the implementation can be explored alongside the live product.
The product in everyday use
Andrei has shared a public view of his child's financial report as an example of BudgetingKid in use. Open it to explore the reporting experience with a real account.
Product learning
WideFix founder Andrei Kaleshka took BudgetingKid through a startup school for social projects and graduated from the program with this project. He found the experience very valuable for thinking through the product and the practical work of bringing it to a wider audience.
We explored a public commercial launch, then concluded that selling and marketing the product would be too expensive for us. With no marketing budget, we decided to keep BudgetingKid public, free and noncommercial.
The application is available to everyone now. We are keeping it public rather than investing in a broader commercial rollout.
Building our own product meant making decisions about scope, implementation, operating costs and distribution together. That experience helps us discuss what your first version needs and how the work fits your budget. Our ongoing Rails maintenance work also informs how we structure applications for later changes.
Public product and source code
Explore the parent and child account experience in the working product.
Use the live applicationSee how we explain the allowance workflow to families.
Visit the landing pageThe pocketmoney repository contains the BudgetingKid application.
Explore the Rails application codeThe separate budgetingkid-landing repository contains the Next.js website.
Explore the landing page codeBuild with WideFix
Tell us who the product is for, what they need to do and the budget you have in mind. We can help define a focused first version and carry the work through implementation.
