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The best budget app is not another budget app

· 4 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

If your “budget app” still feels like a monthly allowance spreadsheet with better colors, we need to talk.

For years, personal finance apps trained us to do one thing: set budgets, track category totals, and try not to feel bad by day 23 of the month.

That’s useful, but it’s no longer enough.

The way people manage money has changed. Your financial life is not just groceries and rent anymore. It is bills, subscriptions, investments, side income, debt payoff, and future planning happening all at once.

So yes, budgeting still matters. But the best budget app in 2026 is not a “budgeting-only” app.

Fina Chat: the past, the current and the future

· 5 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

Amazing Fina Chat

Fina Money has always been the most flexible finance tracker in the world.

Now, however, I would rather call it the most intelligent finance platform in the world.

AI has evolved so tremendously that it has vastly improved how we obtain and organize information. It is especially exciting when AI interacts with our personal data to create real upside!

In this post, I will walk you through a few examples to show you how AI has empowered Fina to become an incredibly useful tool for managing our finances.

Don’t master formulas. Let Fina AI do it for you.

· 2 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

The biggest barrier to a truly flexible system is the learning curve.

Think about spreadsheets: for years, mastering powerful functions like VLOOKUP was a badge of honor. But in the AI era, that burden is disappearing. Whether it’s an AI side panel in Google Sheets or Excel, the focus has shifted from how to build to what you want to achieve.

What Fina Can Do That Other Personal Finance Apps Can’t

· 6 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

Would you like to choose an app that adapts to you, or vice versa?

In a crowded personal finance app landscape, choosing the right tool can make the difference between tolerating your finances and truly mastering them.

While apps like Monarch Money have made strong strides in budgeting and mobile experience, Fina Money is emerging as a fundamentally different platform - one built for giving you true ownership, flexibility, and control over how you view, organize, and grow your financial life.

Investment Overview & Analysis

· 2 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

If you are an investor, you probably want to have a clear overview of your investment portfolio and performance. Fina provides a set of analysis tools to help you understand your investment better, including:

  • Investment Overview Block
  • Investment Performance Block
  • Investment Return Template

Projecting Your Financial Future

· 2 min read
Shawn Cao
Founder @ Fina Money

In finance management, these 3 activities are common and crucial:

  • Cashflow tracking
  • Budget planning
  • Future forecasting

Today, I would like to introduce 3 templates that focus on “future projection” published in Fina gallery lately.

It covers 3 important aspects of our financial life —

  1. Account balance
  2. Debt control
  3. Investment return

Common cashflow issues when setting up a small business

· 3 min read
James Han
Financial Coach @ Money Mastery

Setting up a small business is an empowering career choice. It’s often a chance to turn your passions or talents into a livelihood – you’ll be your own boss and create something meaningful.

But as exciting as the journey is, it’s not without potential hurdles to overcome. One of the main challenges small business owners face is managing cash flow. For many entrepreneurs, cash flow issues can feel like an uphill battle, threatening to derail even the most promising ventures. In this guide, we’re going to look at three of the most common issues – and what you can do to solve them.

Things to know about KYC in finance

· 3 min read
Clay Raterman
COO @ Fina Money

Know Your Customer (KYC) describes the key process used in financial services to identify and verify customers, in order to protect against potential risks and serious legal offences like fraud, corruption, and terrorist financing activities. It goes without saying that KYC has a huge part to play in keeping transactions secure and above board – but what else should we know about them?

In this blog post, we break down three things both industry professionals and consumers will find useful to know about KYC in finance.