How Eleven Years of Managing My Money in Excel Became Lumi Money
For more than a decade, one question kept me opening the same spreadsheet:
“What can I spend?”
Eventually another question followed.
“Am I okay financially?”
I never imagined those two questions would eventually become an app.
11 Years Ago
Late 2014 wasn’t some magical entrepreneurial moment. It was frustration. Money kept disappearing. Bills were getting paid. Paychecks were coming in.
But somehow we’d still end up wondering...
“How did we get here?”
There wasn’t one purchase that caused it. It wasn’t one overdraft. It wasn’t one emergency.
It was dozens of ordinary decisions that slowly added up until we realized something was wrong.
The hardest part wasn’t being broke. It was not knowing we were heading there
A Different Kind of Spreadsheet
One of my leaders at a previous job showed me how he managed his finances. I’d used budgeting spreadsheets before. But his wasn’t organized from top to bottom.
It flowed left to right, like time, and each column represented another day getting closer.
-
Income
- Bills
- Expenses
- Paydays
For the first time, money felt like something I could see moving instead of simply reacting to. That single idea changed how I thought about money.
Even when you trust your instincts, money can feel stressful when there is too much to think about.
Why it was different
Instead of asking…
“Did I stay on budget this month?”
It asked…
-
Can I make it until next Friday?
- What’s coming this week?
-
Will I still be okay after payday?
-
How much is actually safe to spend today?
That shift changed everything.
From 2015 to 2023
The spreadsheet slowly became an obsession. Not because I loved spreadsheets, but because I loved finally understanding my money.
Every year I improved something.
Every month I refined something.
Every week I updated it.
Eventually it became much more than a budgeting worksheet.
And it grew into…
- Cash-flow forecasting
- Weekly spending projections
- 60-day balance forecasting
- Automatic bank transaction imports
- Dashboards
- Spending calculators
- Alerts before going negative
It wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t software, but it worked.
And more importantly…
It helped keep my family financially afloat.
When the Idea Started Growing
Around 2023 something changed. I wasn’t tired of managing money. I was tired of managing spreadsheets. Hours every week. Lots of manual imports. Formula checks and issues to fix. Keeping it updated year after year. Then repeating it again.
That’s when I started asking…
“What if this wasn’t a spreadsheet anymore?”
Friends helped shape the next chapter
One friend helped me believe it could become software. Another challenged me to stop thinking about features and start thinking about people.
They pushed me towards:
-
User stories
- Personas
- Customer interviews
- UX thinking
Long before a single screen existed.
Building Without Knowing How to Code
I didn’t suddenly learn Swift, React or Python. Trust me I have tried to learn how to code long before Lumi Money. I still don’t consider myself a software engineer. Instead...
I learned how to think like a product builder.
My job became
- Defining the product
- Writing prompts
- Testing everything
- Finding bugs
- Breaking features
- Rewriting requirements
- Talking to customers
- Improving the experience
ChatGPT became my product partner. Replit became my builder.
I became the bridge between the customer and the software.
Seeing It For The First Time
Sometime around the summer of 2025, I installed the app on my phone as a beta build through Expo. I remember opening it and seeing something that had lived inside spreadsheets for over ten years finally working as an app.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that kind of joy before.
For the first time, this wasn’t just my spreadsheet anymore.
What I’ve Learned
Looking back, I realize I wasn’t really building a spreadsheet. I was learning.
-
About money.
-
About design.
-
About customers.
-
About products.
-
About software.
-
About patience.
Most of all, I learned that God wastes nothing. Those eleven years weren’t a delay.
They were preparation.
If I could tell 2015 Ricardo one thing…
Keep going.
Trust God.
Start creating sooner.
One day those late nights with a spreadsheet will become something that helps other people too.
