WAITT — We Are In This Together

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Inspiration 14.3 million people in the UK live below the poverty line. 1.3 million are problem gamblers. Alcohol misuse costs the NHS £3.5 billion a year. Behind every one of those numbers is a family — and in most cases, the family doesn't find out until it's too late. Debt letters arrive. Relationships break down. Kids feel the stress but nobody explains why. I searched for an app where the whole family could manage money together. Every budget app on the market — YNAB, Monarch Money, Splitwise — is built for individuals or couples. Nothing exists where Mum, Dad, a 16-year-old son, and a 13-year-old daughter can all set personal targets, track spending daily, and work towards a shared reward. Not a holiday. Not a new car. Just McDonald's on the last Saturday of the month — if everyone keeps their promise. That gap is WAITT. What it does Every family member joins a shared household using a phone number and invite code. Each person sets personal monthly targets — Dad cuts alcohol to £100, Mum limits takeaway to £50, Son aims for 76% in maths, Daughter saves £20 from pocket money. Parents set a family reward with a date. Daily, everyone logs spending by scanning receipts or manual entry. The app tracks progress in real time with visual progress bars. The critical feature: at month end, parents upload their bank statement PDF. The Foxit PDF Services API parses every transaction. The AI engine compares bank data against logged receipts and flags discrepancies — unlogged purchases, gambling merchants like Bet365 or Ladbrokes, alcohol overspending, or large unexplained expenses. Children see only their own spending and target progress. They see how many family members are on track for the reward — but not who failed or why. Parents see everything. When all four green ticks appear, confetti explodes: "You Earned It! McDonald's this Saturday." How we built it React Native with Expo on Replit, running as a native mobile app on Android. SQLite database for all family, member, target, expense, and transaction data. Twilio SMS for phone number OTP authentication — no passwords, no email, just your mobile number. Foxit PDF Services API handles bank statement parsing — extracting transaction tables from uploaded PDFs into structured data. Foxit Document Generation API produces a polished monthly family accountability report as a downloadable PDF. The UI was designed mobile-first with warm family-friendly colours, large touch targets, and a bottom tab navigation bar. The family reward card sits at the top of the home screen — always visible, always reminding everyone what they're working towards. Challenges we ran into UK bank statements have no standard format. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Monzo — every PDF is structured differently. Parsing them reliably into clean transaction rows was the hardest technical problem. The bigger challenge was UX. How do you show a 13-year-old that the family is "at risk" of missing their McDonald's reward without revealing that Dad overspent at the pub? Role-based visibility sounds simple in a database schema. Making it feel right for a real family required dozens of design decisions. Flagging gambling and alcohol needed sensitivity. WAITT is an accountability tool, not a surveillance tool. The language had to be factual, not judgmental — "Unlogged transaction: £45 at Bet365" not "WARNING: GAMBLING DETECTED." Accomplishments that we're proud of The celebration screen. Four green ticks. Confetti. "You Earned It!" That single screen captures everything WAITT exists for. A family that set targets, kept promises, held each other accountable, and earned their Saturday together. The bank statement discrepancy engine catching a gambling transaction on first upload. That feature alone could save a family from financial ruin months before they'd otherwise discover it. The role-based dashboard where a child feels included and responsible without being burdened by adult financial stress. That balance took real thought and we got it right. What we learned People don't need another budget spreadsheet. They need a reason to care. A family reward — however small — transforms budgeting from a chore into a shared mission. The emotional design drives behaviour change more than any chart or graph. Financial transparency within a family is terrifying and powerful. Most families have never once sat together and said "here is what I actually spend." WAITT makes that conversation possible without blame. We also learned that the problem is massive and completely underserved. Every person we described WAITT to said the same thing: "I need this." What's next for WAITT — We Are In This Together

Voice input for hands-free receipt logging using speech-to-text Conversational voice assistant to check progress — "How am I doing this month?" UK Open Banking API integration for real-time transaction feeds instead of manual PDF uploads Partnerships with GambleAware, Alcohol Change UK, and StepChange for early intervention referrals NHS social prescribing integration for family financial wellbeing School partnerships to bring WAITT into financial literacy programmes Freemium model: free for basic family tracking, premium for bank statement analysis and monthly reports

Built With

• foxit
• replit