Our Story

I didn't set out to build a budgeting app

A letter from the founder, on eight kids, hospital parking lots, and the number he couldn't find anywhere else.

The founder's family — ten people in one house.

I set out to keep my family secure, and from quietly losing my mind at the end of every month. The app idea came to me by accident, and it was one of the better ideas I've had.

Some context first, because it's the whole reason this exists. I'm a long-term cancer survivor. I had it at fifteen, and the treatment that saved me also left lasting damage. I've spent a good chunk of my life in and out of hospitals, and I still do. I've had a lot of time in waiting rooms to think about money, because in my house a hospital stay isn't a rare disaster. It's a Tuesday. The surprise bill everyone dreads is just part of my calendar.

My wife and I are raising eight kids. We're a foster and adoptive family, and a couple of our kids have extra needs of their own. Ten people in one house. We buy milk in units normally reserved for small farms, our grocery cart has its own gravity, and I've forgotten what a quiet room sounds like. A big part of our life includes doctor visits and driving, sometimes an hour and a half each way, snacks in the car, a whole traveling circus. Between the two of us, we work several jobs and try to line up schedules that agree with each other about as often as a solar eclipse.

Here's what nobody warns you about “making enough.” We do make enough. We pay our bills. But paycheck to paycheck, even when the paycheck covers it, wears on you in a way that's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't lived it. It stopped feeling like we were getting by and started feeling like I was carrying a very full laundry basket up the stairs every single month, and somebody kept adding socks. Then a medical bill lands, or a car breaks down, and the whole basket goes everywhere. If you know that feeling, then you're exactly who I'm talking to, and I want you to know I'm not writing this from the outside. I've been in it. I've done the math in a parking lot with my wife waiting inside to pay.

“I've done the math in a parking lot with my wife waiting inside to pay.”

I did the responsible thing and tried the apps people swear by. Monarch. YNAB. They're good, and if they work for you, that's great. But I kept hitting the same wall. They're built to show you where your money went and to put limits on categories, which is useful in the same way a weather report about yesterday is useful. I didn't need to budget every last dollar of my life. I just needed a handle on the stuff that actually moves around week to week. And more than a report on the past, I needed two answers right in the moment. How much can I spend today without breaking something later this month, and when a surprise bill lands, how do I shift things around to cover it?

Everybody will tell you the answer is an emergency fund. They're right. It's also a little like being told the answer to being tired is more sleep. True, and not super helpful when you're already up. Like a lot of families living close to the line, we didn't have room to save, and we couldn't find that room until we could finally see the whole picture clearly.

So I built the thing that would give us those answers, mostly late at night after the kids were in bed, powered by coffee and the general refusal to keep guessing. A Safe-to-Spend number I could actually trust. Virtual envelopes for the spending that changes, that fill in on their own instead of making me type in every transaction like it's 2004. Bills lined up against our real balance so nothing snuck up on us anymore.

And it worked, not overnight, and not because our income jumped. We just finally understood our own money, and the knot in my stomach at the end of the month started to loosen. We stopped bracing for the worst and started making actual decisions on purpose. I know exactly how much that weight costs when you carry it every day.

“The more I talked to friends and family about money, the more I realized almost everyone is fighting some version of this.”

The part I didn't expect came next. The more I talked to friends and family about money, the more I realized almost everyone is fighting some version of this. Since everyone's money looks a little different, no rigid one-size system really fits. The thing I built to keep my own family above water turned out to be something a lot of families could use.

That's Tovari. I've been where you are, I found a way through, and now I get to share it. If you're holding things together through something hard, whether it's medical, or a big family, or just a month that won't cooperate, I think this can help. Come see what it feels like to finally know where you stand. And yes, bring coffee. We're friends now.

Founder, Tovari Financial