The story behind Brim

When I was a student, I had no money. Or rather, I had some, but not enough to spend without thinking.

So I started paying attention. I built a Google Sheet with formulas, connected a form to log expenses, set up automations to send myself reports every Sunday. It was tedious to build and tedious to maintain. Every new year meant rewiring the whole thing.

But it worked. I knew where my money went.

Years passed. I got a job, then a better one. I work with data now. Complex data, the kind that makes most people’s eyes glaze over. My income grew, but so did life. Rent. Insurance. Subscriptions I forgot I had. The simple question got harder to answer.

So I went looking for a real app.

What I found made no sense.

Some apps showed me cashflow projections for the next 60 months. I’m not an accountant. I just want to know if I can afford dinner out. Others had charts so complicated that I, someone who works with data every day, couldn’t understand them at first glance. If I can’t figure it out, who is this for?

Most wanted me to connect my bank account. Hand over my credentials. Let them pull 90 days of every transaction, every transfer, every payment. Data I never asked to see and don’t need. I’m not reconciling books. I just want to know what I can spend.

And I live in Brussels, heart of the EU. Privacy isn’t abstract here. It’s how things work. I work with data. I know what happens to it. And I believe how you spend your money is your business. Not data for someone else’s server. If an app requires an internet connection to work, you’re not in control anymore. That’s not paranoia. That’s just how it works.

And the UI. My god, the UI. Excel spreadsheets with app icons. Designs that felt like 2005. Apps so ugly I’d never want to open them, which defeats the entire purpose.

But the real problem was simpler than all of this.

None of them could answer my actual question: How much can I actually spend?

Not my bank balance. Not my net worth. Not a projection. Just: after rent, after subscriptions, after insurance, after everything that’s already spoken for, what’s actually mine to use?

Without that answer, I’d fall into a pattern. Check my bank account. Try to remember what bills were coming. Do mental math. Guess.

If I have this much by this date, I’m probably okay.

It worked until my income started to fluctuate. Then I couldn’t recognize the pattern anymore. Some months I’d get to the end and realize I’d spent too much. I’d transfer money from my savings account to cover it.

Every time felt like a small failure. I was trying to save for the future. And every transfer meant that future got pushed back. Again.

I’d been frustrated long enough. I’d always wanted to build something real. So I decided: if no one’s going to make the app I need, I’ll make it myself.

I called it Brim.

One button.

That’s what you see. Tap it, add a transaction. Money in or money out. Assign it to a category. Done.

It looks effortless. That’s on purpose. Making things simple is much harder than making them complex.

But you don’t see the complexity. You just see one number: what you can actually spend.

I made it fast because budgeting is annoying. The goal is to spend the least possible time tracking so you can get back to your life.

I made it beautiful because you’ll only use what you want to open. Budgeting isn’t fun. But if the app feels good, you’ll actually do it.

And I made it private. Your data lives on your device and in your personal iCloud. That’s it. Not because “privacy-first” is a nice marketing phrase. Because I don’t want my financial data on someone else’s server, so yours isn’t either.

Here’s the truth about budgeting.

It requires rigor.

You can do it every Sunday with a spreadsheet. You can do it every time you spend. But either way, you have to do it. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Even apps with bank connections make you sort and clean and categorize.

The work is unavoidable. But it doesn’t have to be painful.

That’s what Brim is. Not magic. Not AI that reads your mind. Just a tool that respects your time, answers the only question that matters, and stays out of your way.

Thousands of people use Brim now.

We’re just getting started.

— Lazare