We asked 14 industry leaders what app they would build to make people financially capable. Their answers challenge the status quo of budgeting tools and offer genuinely fresh thinking about how financial apps should work.
Most financial apps tell you what you've already spent. They generate charts, assign categories, and present a tidy postmortem of decisions that can't be undone. Yet despite the abundance of these tools, financial stress remains one of the most common sources of anxiety for people worldwide. So what would actually move the needle?
We put that question to 14 professionals — founders, mortgage brokers, debt counselors, operations directors, and marketers — and asked: if you could build one app to make people financially able, what would it be? Their answers reveal a shared frustration with the status quo and some genuinely fresh thinking about how financial tools should work.
Show the Damage Before It Happens
A recurring theme across responses was the failure of reactive finance tools. Several experts argued that the most powerful shift would be moving financial feedback to the moment of purchase — before the swipe, not after the statement arrives.
"Most budgeting apps work backwards. You spend, the app logs it and then you look at it after the month is over and feel guilty."
— Shaun Bettman, CEO / Chief Mortgage Broker, Eden Emerald Mortgages
Bettman's proposed app would work forward instead: scan a product, and see what that same amount invested monthly for 20 years would look like, alongside how many times you've bought similar items in the past 30 days. The logic is rooted in behavioral economics — people make different decisions when they can see the future cost of a choice, not just the present one.
Muhammad Ali takes a similar approach with his concept for an "Opportunity Cost Clock." Input the price of a purchase, and the app converts it into real terms: days of early retirement, years of compounding growth, or an immediate path to invest the same amount instead.
"The biggest hurdle to financial freedom is not a lack of spreadsheets; it's the psychological gap between future needs and current wants."
— Muhammad Ali, SEO Specialist, Cubix
Rami Sneineh, VP and Licensed Insurance Producer at Insurance Navy, frames the same problem through the lens of major decisions rather than daily purchases. His proposed simulator would take any significant financial choice — a job offer, a car purchase, a loan — and run three scenarios side by side: optimistic, realistic, and worst case. "The reason most people stay financially stuck isn't lack of income," he writes. "It's that nobody ever showed them what their decisions actually cost."
The Single Number That Changes Behavior
Dave Toby, Managing Director at Pathfinder Marketing, proposes the simplest concept in the group — and perhaps the most psychologically precise. His idea, Tally Drop, would display one number on your lock screen: your live monthly spending total, updated the moment you make a purchase.
"Seeing it there as $90, as a single number shook me more than it ever did in a spreadsheet."
— Dave Toby, Managing Director, Pathfinder Marketing
No categories, no graphs, no weekly reports. Just a number that grows every time you tap your card — visible before you pocket your phone. Toby draws from direct experience: when his agency displayed total ad spend and total returns as a single live dashboard for clients, those clients cut wasted spend by 28% in the first 30 days without being told what to cut.
Confronting Debt Without the Cushioning
Eric Pemper spent 24 years at CuraDebt working with people in serious financial trouble. His perspective on financial apps is, understandably, the most skeptical. Budgeting tools, he notes, have existed for decades and "do not help very much." The real barrier is behavior, not calculation.
"An application which really did the trick would not be terribly popular. People don't like to hear about their failures."
— Eric Pemper, Managing Member, CuraDebt
His ideal app would show your total debt, true interest rate, and payoff timeline based on your current habits — with no filters and no softening. It would intervene before impulsive decisions, not after. And it would build in a minimal form of accountability: knowing one other person can see your progress is often enough to change behavior. "The ones who stayed on top of things and made regular check-ins did better," he writes. "The ones who were missing in action quickly reverted back to old habits."
Making Existing Skills — and Benefits — Pay
Two contributions from Baris Zeren, CEO of Bookyourdata, focus on what people already have but aren't using. His first idea: an app that matches professionals with idle skills — bookkeeping, data analysis, design — to short-term gigs paying $30–$100 per hour. The insight is that most gig platforms serve the lowest common denominator, while the majority of working adults have specific skills that the market will pay significantly more for.
"A person with an interest in bookkeeping at work might take 5 hours per week doing books with small companies, making an additional $1,000–$2,000 monthly."
— Baris Zeren, CEO, Bookyourdata
His second concept attacks a different kind of unclaimed money: government benefits, tax credits, and financial aid that people qualify for but never access. The app would match users to programs based on simple financial information and track changes in eligibility over time. "Someone might discover they are entitled to up to $3,000 in tax credits, $800 in utility assistance, and $2,400 in childcare assistance which they had never claimed."
Financial Health as a System, Not a Snapshot
Steve Case, a financial and insurance consultant at Insurance Hero, pitches a five-minute tool that tells users exactly where their coverage has gaps — mortgage, protection policies, pension, and debt — with no upselling attached. His motivation comes from a client memory that clearly still resonates.
"I once sat opposite a widow in her 50s who was not aware that her husband's life policy had expired two years before his death."
— Steve Case, Financial & Insurance Consultant, Insurance Hero
Chris Roy, Product and Marketing Director at Reclaim247, proposes a more ambitious infrastructure: FlowScore, a unified financial health engine that consolidates bank accounts, financing agreements, and liabilities into a single live score, with AI-driven nudges for optimal timing on refinancing or claim filing. The ambition is behavior change at scale, not just information delivery.
Harry Morton, Founder of Lower Street, frames the same goal in simpler terms. His proposed app would observe behavior passively and then show users their financial trajectory — what consistent habits today mean for flexibility in one or five years. "When people can see the trajectory they're on, it's easier to make adjustments now, when it's easy."
Other Angles: Operations, Reputation, and AI Markets
Not every idea targets consumers directly. Manny Soto of Burning Daily focuses on independent sellers and warehouse operators, proposing software that calculates the daily financial penalty of stagnant shelf inventory and optimizes pick routes to save workers 15 hours per week per capita. Cal Singh of Equipment Leasing Canada envisions a financial co-pilot that guides working people toward income-generating assets — equipment, vehicles, business property — by translating complex financing options into plain language.
"The distance between making a decision and its result is too broad to experience it in the here and now."
— Cal Singh, Head of Marketing & Partnerships, Equipment Leasing Canada
Matt Baharav of MKB Media Solutions takes the most unconventional stance, arguing that financial security is rooted in authority and reputation rather than savings. His concept, an Authority Equity Tracker, would measure the value of a person's digital brand after each media mention. "Getting one good article published with a large outlet can earn more money for years to come than saving money," he writes.
Xhensila Lala of William Morris Wallpaper points to a similar gap on the creator side: a marketplace for AI-generated assets — prompt libraries, automation workflows, design files — with clean licensing built in.
Finally, Efe Burak of MarketPlays LLC notes he has already built his concept: an app showing users exactly what to do with their money at every stage of the financial journey, from $100 to $10,000, based on what real investors are actually doing rather than textbook advice.
What the Ideas Have in Common
Across all 14 responses, the criticism of conventional budgeting apps is nearly unanimous. They arrive too late, frame data too passively, and fail to engage the behavioral side of financial decision-making. The most compelling ideas in this collection share a common design principle: intervene at the moment of decision, not after it. Whether that's a live number on a lock screen, a forward-looking cost simulator, or a pre-purchase prompt showing what the money could become — the mechanism is the same. Make the consequences visible when they can still be avoided.
The harder problem, as Pemper notes, is that the most effective tool would also be the least popular. People resist honest mirrors. But for those willing to look, there's genuine promise in this next wave of financial thinking.
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