Why I Built Passbook

I have always been curious about money. Not in an obsessive way, just genuinely interested in understanding how it works. I lost my father when I was very young and we didn't have much growing up. I think that's where it started. When you grow up with less, money stops being abstract. You feel its absence in the choices your family can and cannot make.

So when my first salary came in, the first thing I did was take a term insurance policy. My friends thought it was odd. Most of them were buying phones and bikes. I knew from personal experience why it mattered.

Over the years I kept learning, kept investing. Mutual funds first, then stocks. My income grew. I got married. I'm now a father of two. My youngest daughter is just six months old.

After my marriage, I naturally started thinking more seriously about protecting my family. So I did what felt logical. I built a spreadsheet to track our mutual funds, insurance, loans, everything. Shared it with my wife. Sat down with her once a month and walked her through it. Not just the investments and insurance policies, but the bigger picture. What to do with the investments if I wasn't around. How to plan for the kids' education. How to think about money without me.

But my wife is not as consumed by finances as I am. She would listen, and then life would move on. A month later, she would forget. So I started adding more to the spreadsheet. Hoping that if everything was written down clearly enough, she could find her way on her own.

But the more I added, the harder it became. Keeping investment prices current meant constant manual updates. Every new investment meant fixing formulas across multiple sheets. After a while there were ten tabs and finding anything specific meant knowing exactly where to look. It worked for me because I had built it. For my wife, it was confusing and overwhelming. She never felt enthused about opening it.

And even with the spreadsheet, important things were still scattered. Documents were in email and Google Drive. Passwords I never put in the spreadsheet. I was always cautious about that. So she would still have to go to two or three different places to find everything she needed.

Like so many families, I was doing what everyone does. Spreadsheets. Google Drive. Email. Notepad. A little bit everywhere, never quite complete, always one step behind.

Then one of my wife's friends lost her husband in an accident. What followed was just as difficult. Her husband had managed all the finances and she had no idea where everything was. It took months of painful searching to piece together a picture of their own finances.

That hit me hard. Not because my situation was like theirs. I had been careful. But even with all that, my wife would still struggle. The spreadsheet would help, but it was never going to be easy for her.

And I kept thinking, why is this still so hard? There are apps for everything. But for something as important as your family's complete financial picture, the best solution most people have is still a spreadsheet and a scattered set of folders.

I am an engineer and a product manager. I had spent years building products for other people. So I did what felt natural. I built one for my family.

I wanted to make this really simple. A system that works for me to manage our family finances, and is just as easy for my wife to understand. Without me having to explain it every time.

And from the beginning, I knew one thing. I never felt comfortable putting all our financial information into wealth tracker apps. The scams happening around us are real. We all know someone who has lost money to a fraudulent call or a fake message. And the moment we share our data, the spam calls begin.

I also manage investments for my mother and in-laws. They are far more vulnerable to these scams. I was even more reluctant to put their data on any app I couldn't fully trust.

So Passbook works differently. Everything stays on your device and your Google Drive. Nobody can read your data except you and the people you choose to share with. This is not a feature. This is the foundation upon which Passbook is built.

Today, I manage our entire family's finances in one place. Our documents, passwords and notes are all here too. I can see exactly how our investments are performing, where we are overexposed, and what needs attention.

And my wife now opens Passbook on her mobile and actually understands it. She is more confident than ever. That clarity has given me peace of mind, and made our lives a little easier too. I hope it does the same for you.