How We Actually Started
Three friends met at a Manchester coffee shop in late 2018, complaining about how confusing their bank statements were. None of us were financial experts – Kieran was a graphic designer, Marcus taught primary school, and I was doing freelance writing.
What frustrated us most was that financial advice either came from pushy salespeople or academic textbooks that might as well have been written in ancient Greek. We wanted something practical that real people could understand.
"We spent six months just talking to people in Manchester markets, asking what confused
them about money. The answers were surprisingly consistent – nobody understood where
their money actually went each month."
So we built our first tool: a simple expense tracker that categorized spending in plain English. No jargon, no complicated graphs, just clear information about where your money goes.