Media Kit | Lunch Money

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Brief History

In 2018, after experiencing founder burnout, Jen took time to reset by traveling across Europe and Asia. Along the way, she meticulously tracked every dollar, euro, and yen she spent in a multi-currency spreadsheet.

After 1.5 years of managing her finances in Google Sheets, Jen decided to turn it into an app for fun. She wasn't trying to start a business; it was simply a side project.

But after sharing it online and receiving over 1,000 signups overnight, she realized there was clear demand for a modern budgeting system built for cross-border lives, or even simply one that didn't depend on exploiting users' financial data.

For its first five years, Jen ran Lunch Money as a one-person company. She handled everything from engineering to design to support and marketing. Growth came primarily through word of mouth, with a deliberate focus on sustainability over outside investors or data monetization.

Today, Lunch Money remains proudly bootstrapped and independent, supported by a small, globally distributed team and an engaged community of users that help shape how the product evolves.

Read Jen's full origin story on her blog.

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Company Facts

Company name: Lunchbag Labs, Inc.
Product name: Lunch Money
Tagline: Delightfully simple personal finance management
Founded: 2019
Funding: 100% bootstrapped
Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Team size: 5 core team members, plus contractors
Business model: Subscription-based SaaS
Platforms: Web-first, with iOS and Android companion apps
Website: lunchmoney.app
Press contact: [email protected]

Key features

Transactions importing via Plaid, supported for US, Canada and the EU
PDF and CSV transaction importing
Multicurrency support
Net worth tracker
Crypto portfolio tracker
Transaction utilities, such as splitting, grouping, tagging and categorizing
Rules engine for automations
Budgeting, including custom budgeting periods and rollovers
Recurring item tracking
Calendar view
Powerful spend analysis tool
Stats and Trends View
Unlimited collaborators
Unlimited budgeting accounts
Developer API

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Key Statistics

What users love about Lunch Money

Lunch Money earns its reputation the old-fashioned way: users tell other users. With no ad spend and no sponsored content, word of mouth is the engine behind the product's growth. The numbers back it up.

By the numbers

57 Net Promoter Score — well above the SaaS industry average of 31

8.4/10 Average satisfaction rating across 1,170 surveyed users

80% Rate Lunch Money 8 or higher out of 10

65% Are active promoters who recommend it to friends and family

82% Found it easy or very easy to get started

61% Log in daily or every few days

Why users choose Lunch Money

When asked why they chose Lunch Money over competitors, users consistently point to the experience over the feature list:

Ease of use 64%
Pricing 55%
UI and design 51%
Ad-free experience 47%
Company values 36%

Source: Lunch Money User Feedback Survey, 2025 (n=1,170)

04

Founder

Jen (Jennifer) Yip

Founder & CEO

Jen (Jennifer) Yip is the founder and CEO of Lunch Money, an independent personal finance platform she launched as a solo project in 2019. What started as something she built between freelance gigs has grown into a profitable, member-funded business used by thousands of people around the world, with no outside investors or ads.

Before starting Lunch Money, Jen studied Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo and worked as a software engineer at Twitter. She also co-founded a startup that participated in the Y Combinator Fellowship and 500 Startups, experiences that gave her firsthand insight into the traditional startup path and inspired her to build something different.

A long-time digital nomad, Jen developed Lunch Money while living in Los Angeles, Taipei, Toronto, and Fukuoka. Those experiences helped shape the product's flexible, global-first approach to personal finance, and reinforced her belief that software should adapt to people's lives, and not the other way around.

Today, Jen leads a lean, remote team while staying deeply involved in the product and the community. She regularly shares her honest reflections on building a sustainable software business, the realities of bootstrapping, and what it takes to grow sustainably while staying true to your values.

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