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Money IRL logo
Inspiration
Money IRL was born from a quiet observation: most people don’t struggle with money because they’re careless or incapable—they struggle because learning about money is often wrapped in pressure, shame, or urgency.
I wanted to explore a gentler path.
Instead of spreadsheets, lectures or “best practices,” I asked a simpler question:
What if financial literacy felt like practice, not performance?
Money IRL exists to slow the moment down, to let people make everyday money decisions, feel their weight, reflect without judgment and move forward with a little more clarity.
What it does
Money IRL is a gentle, scenario based mobile app that helps people practice real-life money decisions without pressure or judgment. Instead of giving advice or telling users what they should do, the app:
- presents everyday financial situations
- lets users choose how they would respond
- invites them to reflect on how the decision felt
- and offers quiet reassurance before moving on.
There are no scores, no rankings and no “right answers.”
Money IRL focuses on awareness, emotional safety and learning at one’s own pace.
How we built it
Money IRL is a mobile app built with:
- Flutter for cross-platform UI
- Riverpod for predictable state management
- GoRouter for clean, intentional navigation
- Hive for lightweight local persistence The app flows through a simple, complete loop:
- Onboarding (life situation + intention)
- A real-life money scenario
- A reflection moment
- A gentle reassurance
- Back to practice
There are no accounts, no scores and no pressure.
Everything runs locally, privately and calmly. I focused on making sure the app: - opens in the right place,
- remembers where the user left off,
- and feels emotionally safe at every step. Once the core worked, I froze it as MVP v0.1 and tested it on a real Android device.
Challenges we ran into
Some of the biggest challenges weren’t technical, they were philosophical.
- Resisting the urge to gamify progress
- Avoiding features that add friction instead of value
- Keeping the experience reassuring without becoming vague
- Knowing when to stop and call the MVP “done” On the technical side, challenges included:
- taming Material 3 quirks,
- managing navigation state cleanly,
- and ensuring persistence worked reliably across restarts.
Each challenge reinforced the same lesson:
clarity beats cleverness.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Designing and shipping a complete, functioning MVP
- Building a full user flow from onboarding to reflection
- Prioritizing emotional safety over gamification
- Creating a product that works entirely offline and locally
- Resisting feature creep and honoring MVP boundaries
- Testing the app on a real Android device
- Translating a values-driven idea into working software
Most of all, I’m proud that Money IRL stays true to its purpose:
helping people engage with money in a calmer, more compassionate way.
What we learned
Building Money IRL taught me that:
- Learning sticks when people feel safe.
- Reflection is more powerful than instruction.
- Progress doesn’t need numbers to be real.
- Calm UX is not “empty", it’s intentional. Technically, I also learned the value of:
- starting with a functioning core before adding features,
- respecting MVP boundaries,
- and letting architecture serve the idea, not the other way around. Most importantly, I learned that software can be kind.
What's next for Money IRL
Money IRL is intentionally starting small. The next steps will build gently on the foundation already in place:
- Adding more real-life scenarios that reflect diverse financial realities
- Expanding reflection prompts to deepen self awareness
- Introducing optional progress summaries (never scores)
- Improving visual polish and accessibility
- Exploring optional accounts only to support cross-device continuity All future updates will respect the same core principle: financial literacy should feel human, not overwhelming.
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