Did you know that Lunch Money is proudly Canadian? 🇨🇦 But don’t worry, we built it for everyone, no matter where you are in the world.
We’ve worked hard to make Lunch Money location-friendly, whether offering subscriptions in three currencies or supporting multi-currency. And thanks to our public developer API, our wonderful community has contributed some awesome regional features.
This month, we are highlighting a tool built by a member of our Canadian community! It’s called Lunchsimple, and it allows you to import transactions from Wealthsimple, a popular Canadian digital investing platform.
Finally, our community members have also helped us update our cryptocurrency exchange connectors. Read on for more details.
Our February Community Spotlight is on Colby Hubscher, a Canadian living in Laos and the creator of Lunchsimple!
Q: How did you come to start using Lunch Money?
Five years ago I was engaged, painfully broke, and desperately needed to save for a wedding.
I had experience with Mint, but Mint was becoming hard to use.
Thankfully, around that time I remembered seeing Lunch Money being promoted within Jamstack circles (back when JAM was all the rage) and made the switch.
Q: What gave you the idea of creating Lunchsimple, a tool to import transactions from Wealthsimple to Lunch Money?
Unfortunately, as some may already know, Plaid (and thus Lunch Money) does not support Wealthsimple. However, a Plaid-adjacent service called MX does support Wealthsimple.
This glimmer of hope encouraged me to look for a solution.
In my search, I discovered the fantastic Wealthsimple API project by Guillaume Boudreau, which connects to Wealthsimple’s GraphQL API. I then discovered the equally awesome lunchable project by Justin Flannery, which provides a clean Python interface for Lunch Money.
My job was easy. I just had to marry these two together (not the authors, the projects!). Now, anyone comfortable running a Python project from the command line should be able to automate importing their transactions to Lunch Money.
Editor’s notes: A Lunch Money Wealthsimple integration is available in beta testing, but there are known issues importing from Cash accounts.
Q: Did you learn anything about Lunch Money or Lunch Money users that you didn’t know when you started this project?
I have a newfound appreciation for the fact that Lunch Money offers an API, which is something most budgeting software apps don’t provide. Sure, I could generate CSVs from the Wealthsimple API and then manually import those, but where’s the fun in that?
Q: Is there anything you’d like to ask the LM user community for?
I’d love for more folks to try Lunchsimple! You can ask questions or provide feedback in the #lunchsimple channel on the Lunch Money Discord server.
I know running a Python project from the command line isn’t for everyone. When I showed the project to my wife, she said, “I’d never use that.” And that’s fair. She’s not a huge nerd developer!
I have ideas for making a single-file executable GUI version, and/or porting the project to a browser extension. However, I’ll keep refining the CLI version until I determine the demand for these things.
Thank you, Colby! Our community has many Wealthsimple users, and I know your contribution will be appreciated!
Do you have cryptocurrency holdings?
One of the many features that makes Lunch Money unique is its multi-currency support. This extends to cryptocurrencies, which you can track automatically and include in the Net Worth Tracker.
Recently, Coinbase, a popular crypto exchange, invalidated all of its legacy API keys, which broke the Lunch Money connector to Coinbase.
Thankfully, with the help of two valued members of our community, Max Rosner and Dominic Roy-Stang via our Discord server, we’ve audited and updated our cryptocurrency offerings.
Here is what this means for Lunch Money users with crypto holdings:
Users with a Coinbase connection will need to create a new connection via the Accounts page. They can then delete their old (non-working) connection and opt to merge the balance history with the new connection.
Issues with our Ethereum wallet connector were fixed this month. Existing connections should automatically recognize balance updates, and users can link an Ethereum wallet to sync crypto balances in Lunch Money.
Kraken, another popular cryptocurrency exchange, is also available. Existing connections should continue to work, and the instructions for setting up a connection have been improved.
Want to link your cryptocurrency wallets? Head over to the Accounts page, click “Add Account” and select “Link My Cryptocurrency Wallet”.
As part of this review, we have dropped support for Binance, another cryptocurrency exchange with very few Lunch Money users and different offers for various regions of the world.
If this impacts you, please reply to this email and we can discuss alternatives!
Calling all Financial Coaches!
Are you a financial coach who loves using Lunch Money? We’re exploring a certification program that can help you to find more clients to guide you to financial success using Lunch Money. For more details, please visit the page below and join the waitlist to be the first in line when we launch!
Connect with us on social media!
Check out our latest YouTube video by financial coach Jacob Wade!
If you get paid every two weeks, a monthly budget won’t cut it-you need a bi-weekly budget. This method, also known as paycheck budgeting, breaks your finances into two-week cycles, aligning your income with your expenses.
Finally, we’d love to connect with you on social media. Find us on the following platforms:
Do you have a community story?
We’d love to feature more members of our community in this newsletter. Have you developed an app, plug-in or tool that you want to share? Please reach out to jp@lunchmoney.app!
Even if you aren’t a developer, if you have ideas on how we can make it easier for users to take advantage of contributions from the developer community, I’d love to hear from you.
