Can universal productivity apps ever include a "finance organizer"?

The answer is YES — but there’s a catch: developers have to build on a universal human habit.

Hi HN- here is my story,

About ten years ago, I started to deeply internalize the challenge of simplifying expense tracking. I badly needed to track certain spending in my life (not everything), but had no viable way to do it efficiently, effectively, and in a lasting manner.

Being a senior finance controller at the time, failing that challenge felt extra annoying. A few years later, fixing this problem became my first startup, Entries, through which I tested five different apps. With each app, the idea evolved through hours of research, ideation, conception, UX sketches, Figma designs, and user testing — and so did “the problem” we pitched at each launch. Eventually, it distilled into two questions that still guide me today: Why has no personal budgeting or expense-tracking app become truly universal? Why hasn’t any finance organizer reached the same adoption as calendars, note apps, or file drives? The more I searched for an answer, the clearer the gap became. Productivity tools that reached universality—calendars, notes, drives, etc—are built on habits people already have, with almost no learning curve. What universal habit could a finance organizer adapt to finally become truly universal? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Salama Menem, Founder at Entries.