Why we built Collie
I'm an engineer at heart. I like building things, always have. For five years though, the thing I kept rebuilding wasn't code. It was a spreadsheet.
That spreadsheet ran my whole financial life. Car purchase, house deposit, loan repayments, my investments, all of it. It told me how much I actually had left each month, which loan to pay off first, how much I needed to set aside for whatever was coming next, a wedding, a new car, getting a room ready for a baby, building up an emergency fund. It did the job. That was never the issue.
The issue was that it grew. Five years of tabs and formulas and little fixes I'd bolted on turned it into something only I could really use. I couldn't just hand it to someone.
And people kept asking me to. Friends, family, once they knew I had my finances properly mapped out, wanted the same for themselves. Every time, I'd end up copying part of my spreadsheet, stripping out my own numbers, trying to explain formulas that made sense to nobody but me. It got old fast, and honestly it wasn't even helping them much. They needed something of their own, not a leftover piece of mine.
So I built one for real. As an app this time, not a spreadsheet. That's Collie.
It covers the same ground my spreadsheet did: a monthly budget planner (income, fixed costs, loans, sinking funds), an expense tracker to compare what you spend against what you planned, a loan calculator that shows you exactly which debt to attack first, savings goals for whatever you're working toward, and an investment tracker for your net worth over time. No bank connection required anywhere, and nothing to install either, it runs right in the browser on your phone or your laptop. You put in your own numbers and they stay yours.
I have a full time job doing this kind of thing already, I'm an IT and change lead at Volkswagen Financial Services, but this is the first time I've built something just because I wanted it to exist, for myself and for the people who kept coming to me for help. They've been genuinely supportive of me doing this on the side, which I don't take for granted.
Collie's live now, open beta, every Pro feature free until July 31st. If you've ever run your money out of a spreadsheet that only made sense to you, this is for you. Come try it, and tell me what you think, good or bad. There's a Discord too if you want to follow along or just leave feedback.
— João