Building Aurefi — a privacy-first personal finance app where adding a transaction is as easy as sending a text message.
Every time I downloaded a budgeting app, the story was the same.
Week one?
I tracked everything.
Coffee.
Groceries.
Fuel.
Subscriptions.
Then life got busy.
A week later, I completely stopped using it.
Not because budgeting wasn't useful.
Because logging every single expense felt like filling out a tiny tax form.
Open the app.
Tap Add Transaction.
Choose Expense.
Choose a Category.
Enter the Amount.
Pick the Date.
Type a Description.
Save.
Repeat.
After doing that fifty times, budgeting becomes the chore instead of the solution.
That's when I asked myself one question.
Why can't adding a transaction be as easy as sending a text message?
That idea eventually became Aurefi.
The Goal
I didn't want to build another finance app.
There are already hundreds of them.
Some connect directly to your bank.
Some automatically categorize everything.
Some are packed with features you'll probably never use.
Instead, I wanted to solve one problem:
Make tracking money so easy that people actually keep doing it.
Everything else was built around that idea.
Meet Aurefi
Aurefi is a privacy-first personal finance application that combines AI with simple budgeting.
Instead of filling out forms, you can simply type something like:
Paid $24.50 for groceries at Walmart this morning.
or
Received my monthly salary of $2,500.
The AI understands what you meant and prepares the transaction for you.
It automatically identifies:
- Expense or Income
- Amount
- Merchant
- Category
- Date
- Description
- Financial diary note
Nothing is automatically saved.
The AI simply prepares everything.
You review it.
You stay in control.
My Favorite Feature: AI Quick Add
This is the feature I'm most proud of.
I wanted adding an expense to feel as natural as sending a message to a friend.
Instead of tapping through multiple screens, you simply write what happened.
For example:
Dinner with friends cost $38 yesterday.
The AI fills the transaction form in seconds.
Even better...
It only suggests categories that already exist in your own budget.
It doesn't invent random categories.
It works with your existing data.
That tiny detail made the experience feel much smarter.
You Can Even Talk to It
Typing is already faster than traditional finance apps.
But sometimes you're walking.
Driving.
Shopping.
Or simply don't feel like typing.
So I added voice input.
Tap the microphone.
Say:
"Paid twenty dollars for lunch."
Your browser converts speech into text.
The AI parses it exactly the same way.
The form fills automatically.
On mobile, it feels surprisingly natural.
AI That Helps Before You Spend
Recording expenses is useful.
But I kept wondering...
Wouldn't it be better if AI could help before the purchase happens?
That's how the AI Money Simulator was born.
Imagine typing:
I'm thinking about buying a laptop for $1,999.
Instead of recording an expense, Aurefi estimates things like:
- Monthly financial impact
- Yearly financial impact
- How it affects your savings goals
- Alternative suggestions generated by AI
Sometimes seeing the future cost of a purchase changes your decision entirely.
That became one of my favorite features while building the app.
Building It
Under the hood, the workflow is fairly straightforward.
When the user enters natural language, the client sends:
- The text
- User currency
- Existing categories
to a serverless API.
The API uses Groq's Llama 3.3 70B Versatile model to convert the sentence into structured JSON.
The response is validated before anything reaches the UI.
Amounts are checked.
Categories are matched.
Dates are normalized.
Only then is the transaction form populated.
One lesson I learned quickly:
Never trust AI output directly.
Always validate everything.
AI should speed up workflows—not introduce unpredictable data.
Privacy Wasn't Just a Feature
Finance apps deal with some of the most personal information people have.
I wanted privacy to be part of the architecture—not just a marketing page.
Aurefi follows a privacy-first approach.
Financial records are encrypted before cloud storage and synchronization using modern browser cryptography (AES-256-GCM).
Anonymous users can start immediately without creating an account.
There are:
- No advertisements
- No data selling
- No invasive third-party tracking
My goal wasn't just to build another budgeting tool.
It was to build one people could actually trust.
Tech Stack
Here's what powers Aurefi.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Framework | Next.js 16 |
| UI | React 19 |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS v4 |
| Database | Neon PostgreSQL |
| ORM | Drizzle |
| Authentication | Auth.js |
| AI | Groq (Llama 3.3 70B Versatile) |
| Charts | Recharts |
| Encryption | Web Crypto API (AES-256-GCM) |
| Payments | Lemon Squeezy |
Building a Finance Dashboard That Actually Helps People Understand Money
One of the biggest challenges wasn't building charts or displaying numbers.
It was deciding which information actually matters.
A lot of finance apps show users endless tables, transactions, and statistics. But having more data doesn't always mean having more understanding.
For Aurefi, I wanted the analytics dashboard to answer simple questions:
- Where is my money going?
- How much am I earning compared to spending?
- Which categories take most of my budget?
- How are my financial patterns changing over time?
The dashboard became a visual summary of a user's financial life.
It includes:
- Income and expense summaries to quickly understand the overall picture.
- Monthly trends to see how finances change over time.
- Spending by category to identify where money is going.
- Income source tracking to understand earning patterns.
- Category breakdowns to discover spending habits.
The hardest part wasn't creating the charts.
It was designing an experience where users can look at their finances for a few seconds and immediately understand what is happening.
Every card, chart, and metric has one purpose:
Turn complicated financial data into simple decisions.
Building this taught me that good dashboards are not about showing more information.
They're about showing the right information at the right time.
What I Learned
Building Aurefi taught me a few lessons.
People don't hate budgeting.
They hate logging transactions.
AI works best when it removes friction.
It shouldn't replace the user's decisions.
It should eliminate repetitive work.
Privacy starts with architecture.
If your system requires reading everyone's financial history, it probably isn't privacy-first.
Simple experiences are incredibly difficult to build.
The less work users have to do, the more work developers usually have to do behind the scenes.
What's Next?
I'm continuing to improve Aurefi based on feedback from real users.
Some of the best ideas have actually come from Reddit and developer communities.
The product today is very different from what I launched because people kept suggesting improvements I hadn't considered.
That's honestly one of my favorite parts of building in public.
I'd Love Your Feedback
Whether you're a developer, designer, finance enthusiast, or someone who's given up on budgeting apps before, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.
You can try Aurefi here:
No credit card.
No ads.
You can start immediately.
If you have suggestions, feature ideas, or criticism, leave a comment below.
I read every single one, and there's a good chance your feedback will shape the next update.
Get in Touch
I'm always interested in hearing feedback, discussing ideas, or connecting with other developers and builders.
If you try Aurefi, have suggestions for new features, or simply want to chat about AI, web development, or building SaaS products, feel free to reach out.
🌐 Aurefi: https://www.aurefi.xyz
📧 Email: nimashmendis.dev@gmail.com
You can also leave a comment below—I read every one and often build features based on community feedback.
Thanks for taking the time to read my story. Happy coding! 🚀
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