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Build Your Own Money App For Free
Monarch charges a hundred bucks a year to show you your own money. I rebuilt it for free in one night with Claude Code, and mine caught $150 in subscriptions I'd forgotten about.
By Ryan Frizelle · 4 min read
Every number these apps charge you for is already yours, sitting in a file you can download from your bank in about two minutes.
Here is what you will do:
- 1.Download your transactions from your bank as a CSV file, which is just a simple spreadsheet export.
- 2.Drop those files in a folder and point Claude Code at them.
- 3.Run one prompt and get a finance dashboard that updates itself every morning.
Your bank data never leaves your computer. Claude Code reads the files right there on your machine, so you are not handing your numbers to an app you have to trust. It is free, and there is no card to put down.
The prompt that builds your money dashboard
I want you to build me a personal finance dashboard from my own bank data. I am not a developer, so explain anything you need from me in plain English.
I dropped my transaction history into this folder as CSV files I exported from my bank and credit cards. Read all of them.
Build me a single dashboard I can open in my browser that shows:
1. My net worth and how it changed this month
2. Where my money actually went, grouped by category
3. My runway: how many months I could survive on savings if my income stopped tomorrow
4. Every recurring charge and subscription you can find, so I can catch ones I forgot about
Make it clean and easy to read on my phone and my laptop. If a category is unclear, ask me instead of guessing. When it is done, tell me exactly how to open it.Liked this? There's 50x more in the course.
One-time purchase. Keep forever.
That one prompt reads every transaction you exported and turns it into a real dashboard. You get your net worth, where your money actually went, and a list of every subscription quietly draining your account.
Here is the one bit of setup before you run it:
- 1.Log into your bank and credit card sites, find your transactions, and download them as CSV. Look for an Export or Download button near your transaction list.
- 2.Make a new folder on your computer and drop every CSV file into it.
- 3.Open Claude Code in that folder, paste the prompt, and let it build.
Now make it update itself every morning
Now make this dashboard update on its own every morning before I wake up.
Set it up so that each day it re-reads any new transactions in this folder and refreshes the dashboard automatically, with nothing for me to click. Walk me through any one-time setup on my computer step by step, in plain English, and keep the whole thing free. When I need to drop in a fresh export from my bank, tell me exactly where to put it.Ask Claude Code to keep it free when it sets up the daily refresh, and it will use what is already on your computer instead of any paid service.
That is the whole thing. Export your transactions. Drop them in a folder. Run the prompt. You just replaced a paid app with one that fits your life exactly, and it costs you nothing every month from here on.
Want more builds like this that turn Claude Code into your own personal money and life operator?
Liked this? There's 50x more in the course.
One-time purchase. Keep forever.
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