Most budgeting apps track where your money goes. Mindspend tracks how you feel about it. Every purchase gets one of three emotion tags: worth it, okay, or regret. No categories, no bank linking, no complicated setup. Just one simple question after each purchase: how did that feel? After a few weeks, you see your spending patterns through a completely different lens. It's not about restricting yourself. It's about understanding yourself.
Hey PH! I'm Alex, dev behind Mindspend.
Quick backstory: I've always been okay with money on paper, but never really felt in control. Like, I'd check my bank and think "where did all that go?" Not because I was overspending on anything crazy. Just a bunch of small stuff that added up.
I tried budgeting apps. You know the drill. Connect your bank, set 15 categories, feel guilty when you go over. I'd last maybe a week before uninstalling.
So I tried something different. What if instead of tracking categories, I just tracked how I felt about each purchase? Worth it, okay, or regret. Three options. Takes 2 seconds.
Turns out that's all I needed. After a couple weeks I could literally see that like a third of my spending was stuff I regretted. Not big purchases. Just random stuff on autopilot. Once I saw the pattern, it kind of fixed itself.
I built it into an app because my friends kept asking for it. It's free right now, no ads, works on both iOS and Android.
Honestly just excited to share it and hear what you all think. Happy to answer any questions!
Sounds like a great idea to solve overspending, and it would be nice for it to sync with budget trackers people already may use (e.g. Notion) for bigger picture budgeting / factoring in necessary spending such as rent and utility bills. How does Mindspend know your transactions, do you have to manually input them?
This is a really interesting angle on budgeting. I'd love to see this go further. Imagine if it could integrate with e-commerce platforms and show how other buyers felt about the same product over time. Like an emotional review layer on top of your purchase history. With sites like Amazon flooded with fake reviews, something like this could become a genuinely trustworthy way to judge whether a purchase is worth it.
Really interesting angle — most budgeting apps make you feel guilty about spending. Focusing on how it felt instead of just the category is a much more honest way to understand your habits. Congrats on the launch 👍
Curious what happens with "okay" over time - does it tend to drift toward regret or worth it as people use the app longer? That middle category feels like where the most interesting behavioral data would live.
