I built matcha money because managing family finances shouldn't require spreadsheets, five different apps, or giving up on your budget by February.

When I graduated from college in 2014, I had no idea what to do with my first paycheck from Google — how much to save, how much was actually mine after taxes, what "responsible spending" even looked like. Like many people, I started off using Mint but quickly grew out of the platform.

Eventually, I ended up building my own spreadsheet to handle budgeting and planning for goals. Over the years, I invested more time and energy into it, automating bank transaction and balance imports and even developing some basic automatic categorization. It worked well enough for me — until I got married. My wife had her own system of spreadsheets, and figuring out a solution between our two systems was.. challenging to say the least.

After years of trying to reconcile two spreadsheets with different assumptions, I did what a software engineer does and started building an app. I wanted something that could make it easy for my family to budget and plan financially for the future. But I also knew that no matter what I built, what I found helpful would always differ from what my wife or anyone else needed. Because AI tools have gotten genuinely useful, I built the platform to work with them natively — so the app can adapt to how each person thinks about their money.

It's a platform designed from day one to work any way modern families actually think about money — and to play nicely with the AI tools you already use. I also want personal finance tools to be affordable, so plans start at $19/year.

Now you may be wondering, why should I trust some guy's app for my personal finances? I am an ex-Google SRE and Search product engineer, so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about privacy, security, and reliability. My wife and I are also users of matcha money, and you can be sure that I'll be the first to hear if anything is wrong! This platform is not going anywhere.

Here's what's included at launch.

Envelope budgeting

Give every dollar a purpose. Organize your spending into categories — needs, wants, savings, and income — and allocate from your actual income. When a category runs out, you know before you overspend.

Bank syncing

Connect your checking accounts, savings accounts, and credit cards via Plaid. Transactions sync automatically so you're always working with real numbers.

Investment & net worth tracking

See your full financial picture — track holdings, balance history, and net worth across all your accounts, on-budget and off-budget.

Transaction management

Split transactions across categories, search and filter by merchant or amount, add notes and tags. Every transaction is a first-class citizen.

Savings goals

Four goal types to match how you actually save:

• Target — save toward a specific amount by a date
• Project — track spending on an ongoing project
• Reserve — maintain a minimum balance
• Tracker — watch a balance grow without a deadline

Recurring bills

Track what's coming before it hits. See upcoming bills and how they fit into your budget.

Family-first

Create or join a family organization. Invite your partner or family members with role-based permissions — owner, admin, or member. Everyone sees the same budget, the same accounts, the same goals.

AI-native from day one

matcha money ships with a full MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants, plus a REST API with OAuth. Everything you can do in the app, your AI assistant can do too — read transactions, update budgets, check goal progress, manage rules.

This isn't an afterthought integration. The API and MCP tools have full parity with the web app.

And more

• Smart CSV import from other budgeting apps — bring your history with you
• Google Sheets export sync for custom reporting
• Advanced tagging for flexible transaction organization
• Transaction rules with date conditions, splits, and auto-tagging
• PWA installable on mobile — add to your home screen
• Dark mode because of course
• Stripe billing with simple, transparent pricing

I hope matcha money is as useful for your family as it's been for mine. Please reach out at support@matcha.money for any questions!

Chris Hsu