you tried the budgeting apps. they didn't stick.
but the bills still live in your head.
now there's a place to write it down.
a financial journal for what's due, what's coming, and what you keep meaning to buy.
free to download. iPhone only for now.
rent due monday, 38,000฿
remind me to pay shogun back by sunday
thinking about flights to da nang next month, ~$180
rent due monday, 38,000฿
remind me to pay shogun back by sunday
thinking about flights to da nang next month, ~$180
a journal for people who keep money in their head.
if you’d rather write a thought down than build a budget, this is for you.
the bills, the loans, the maybe-laters — all in one place that thinks with you.
why i built norma.
my base is new york. i split time between there and the uk, where my girlfriend lives, and i freelance as an iOS developer in between. in 2022 i spent eight months in bali, three in cape town, one in dubai, and then i came home.
bali is where i noticed the thing.
i was still on payroll back then. my expenses were low — rent was a fraction of new york, food was nothing, everything was cheap. by every spreadsheet metric i was doing well. but i was bleeding money in a way no budget caught. not on bills. not on big purchases. on the dollars that don’t have a name — the ones you spend on a coffee, a thing you saw, a flight you booked because the price was good and you could afford it here even though you couldn’t really afford it there. a cheaper city doesn’t lower your spending. if you’re not careful, subconsciously you give yourself more permission to spend.
i came home and left the job. the next three years were contract work, small apps for clients that never went anywhere, and private tutoring to keep the lights on. the income was real but it was uneven — a big invoice one month, nothing the next, a tutoring check on tuesday, a stripe payout on friday. the financial cognitive load went up by an order of magnitude. the unnamed-dollar problem from bali turned into a permanent condition.
i tried copilot. i tried mint before that. i’d built my own spreadsheets for years. none of them solved it. i tried being the kind of person who logs every transaction. i realized i’m not that person. i’m not the only one.
i thought i was building an expense tracker. i wasn’t. i was trying to solve a different problem and didn’t know it yet: i didn’t need my money tracked. i needed it contextualized. i needed the right thought resurfaced at the right moment — the bill before it was due, the loan when the cash came in, the trip i was half-planning held somewhere other than my own head. no spreadsheet does that. no tracker does that. the numbers can be perfect and the chaos still wins.
so i built the obvious thing anyway: an expense tracker with a bank connection. i integrated plaid. i shipped it. and then i watched my own transactions take three days to show up in the app and realized i’d built the same problem i was trying to solve. a tracker that’s three days behind is just a slower way to feel bad about decisions you’ve already made.
i ripped it out.
what’s left is what norma actually is now: a place to write the money thoughts down — the bills, the reminders, the maybe-laters — and have them come back to you when they matter. not a tracker. not a budget. a financial journal that talks back.
if you’ve tried copilot, or mint, or a spreadsheet, or your own private system, and quit them all — this is for you. not because you’re bad with money. because the actual problem was never in your spending. it was in trying to hold it all in your head and not being able to make sense of it.
i tried copilot. i tried mint before that. i’d built my own spreadsheets for years. none of them solved it. i tried being the kind of person who logs every transaction. i realized i’m not that person. i’m not the only one.
i thought i was building an expense tracker. i wasn’t. i was trying to solve a different problem and didn’t know it yet: i didn’t need my money tracked. i needed it contextualized. i needed the right thought resurfaced at the right moment — the bill before it was due, the loan when the cash came in, the trip i was half-planning held somewhere other than my own head. no spreadsheet does that. no tracker does that. the numbers can be perfect and the chaos still wins.
so i built the obvious thing anyway: an expense tracker with a bank connection. i integrated plaid. i shipped it. and then i watched my own transactions take three days to show up in the app and realized i’d built the same problem i was trying to solve. a tracker that’s three days behind is just a slower way to feel bad about decisions you’ve already made.
i ripped it out.
what’s left is what norma actually is now: a place to write the money thoughts down — the bills, the reminders, the maybe-laters — and have them come back to you when they matter. not a tracker. not a budget. a financial journal that talks back.
if you’ve tried copilot, or mint, or a spreadsheet, or your own private system, and quit them all — this is for you. not because you’re bad with money. because the actual problem was never in your spending. it was in trying to hold it all in your head and not being able to make sense of it.
free to start.
cancel anytime · iPhone only for now