i had a money problem. not earning it, tracking it.
i was spending a lot, sometimes lending to friends, and then just forgetting about it. my system was a notepad app on my phone. every entry typed by hand, every total calculated by me, again and again.
who owes me, who i owe, what already came back. the notepad never forgot anything, but it never calculated anything either. that part was still me, and i was the unreliable part of the system.
so i built my own app and called it roots. expenses, income, lending, borrowing, all of it per person. repayments tracked, budgets that warn me before i cross them, recurring things handled automatically. it works offline and installs on my phone like a normal app.
i made it stupid simple on purpose, because the notepad did not fail from missing features. it failed because using it correctly needed effort from me every single time. lend ₹500 to a friend, that is one entry. he pays ₹200 back, that is one tap. the app remembers the ₹300 that is still open. i do not have to.
then i gave it to my friends. now they use it daily and they love it. people using something you built for yourself is a different kind of feeling.
the app → Roots
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