Blog by Jen Yip, founder of Lunch Money
Over the last month, I’ve been setting up AI systems to use within Lunch Money. It started with building reusable workflow commands (skills) in Claude Code, and eventually I set up OpenClaw on a separate machine to experiment with running multiple agents autonomously 24/7. Here’s a snapshot of where I’m at with my AI journey, my learnings so far, and what’s next. Note: none…
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Prologue This has been both the hardest and most time-consuming post to write to date. I’ve been meaning to get started on this for weeks now, and I’ve only recently begun to find the strength to put my collection of complicated feelings into coherent words. What proceeds is the final iteration of my attempt to condense the most tumultuous months of my life and introduce what’s…
Alright, I’m one day late, but I have a good excuse. I was waiting to hit a certain milestone so my goal of writing weekly retrospectives for the month of February would end on a high note. Lunch Money just hit 1000 paying subscribers and $80,000 ARR. Woohoo! To celebrate, today I went on an engineering spree and shipped 7 feature requests from our Canny, and now I’m writing to all my…
This has been a crazy week. I’ve always been shy about calling Lunch Money “a real company” but in the last 7 days, Lunch Money has surely graduated from just being an app to being a full-blown business. Hiring It’s funny that just a few weeks ago, I was pretty happy and set on the leisurely path of staying a company of one. By last Wednesday, I had effectively hired 3…
Wow, where did the week go? Luckily I can answer that question since I use the Daily Time Tracking app! In the last 7 days, I put in roughly 40 hours of work. Let’s use this time breakdown as a template for this week’s retrospective. Engineering (New feature): 17 hours, 9 minutes I often get asked how I prioritize features or decide what to work on next. In the beginning, I worked…
Last week, I wrote down on a piece of paper all the tasks I do for Lunch Money. Then I organized them into two columns: Column A: what I wish I had time to do more of Column B: what I rather not be doing At the top of Column A was engineering and blogging. Writing blog posts like Preparing for solopreneurship and Optimizations as a company of one takes me days because I pore over the content and…
Hello! 👋 My name is Jen and I’m the founder, engineer, designer and customer support at Lunch Money, a personal finance and budgeting web app. It was never part of my life goals to start my own company, let alone a company of one. In fact, if you had asked me before I actually took the leap if this was within the realm of possibility, I would have said hell freakin’ no.
Hello! 👋 My name is Jen and I’m the founder, engineer, designer and customer support at Lunch Money, a personal finance and budgeting web app. In short, I am a company of one. I answer the customer support emails and I code and deploy new features. I also manage the API docs and knowledge base, poke around the logs when there are issues, write the bi-monthly newsletters and I designed the…
Quick introduction: 👋 Hi, I’m Jen! I’m the founder, chief budgeter, engineer & designer behind Lunch Money, a personal finance and budgeting web app. It’s been 6 months since the official launch of Lunch Money and I’ve been sharing milestones, both big and small. But that’s hardly the full picture. While I like the idea of sharing highlights regularly to keep morale…
Hi there, my name is Jen and I am building Lunch Money, a multicurrency personal finance tool for the modern-day spender. Frugality is in my blood. Early on in life, I learned the value of a dollar from my parents and have been particularly frugal (or money-conscious) since I quit my full-time job 4 years ago. This has permeated all aspects of my life now, as a self-proclaimed “froodie”– a frugal…
This is a recounting of my journey so far post-college. I feel as though I’ve allowed myself to fully explore every phase of life and follow every inkling of curiosity. It is an ongoing journey and I hope it keeps surprising me! Note: I’ve written in depth about a number of my experiences mentioned here, so instead of going into detail, I’ve just linked to the relevant blog post…
TL;DR: Lived in Japan for 5 months and spent most of that time developing a budgeting app from scratch, working as a freelance software engineer, learning Japanese and getting acquainted with the local culture. Sign up for the open beta or skip to the part about what makes the app different. Keep reading for the story, process, and motivation behind this. Last August, Justin and I booked…
Disclaimer: This post is ripe with generalizations based on my observations as a foreigner in Fukuoka. Note that when I say “the Japanese”, I know not everyone here abides by these principles. And more than anything, I’m referring to the people we interact with day-to-day in Fukuoka, which is located near the country-side and is much less diverse than Tokyo. Please enjoy! Low tide canals in…
Hello world! It’s been over a month since our last correspondence. Justin and I have been doing very well in Fukuoka. We settled in fairly quickly, having found a routine that works for us which includes grocery shopping at our local supermarket, going to the gym every morning and rotating through a trio of hot teas (soba tea, green tea, and rooibos!) throughout the day. Our time has been split…
Hello from the other side of the world! Justin and I are currently in Fukuoka, Japan and we’ll be here until May. Um what? Where? Why? We first read about this city 2 years ago on a weekend trip to Tainan, Taiwan. I picked out a bilingual travel magazine and flipped to a page that highlighted Fukuoka in Japan. Neither of us had heard of it before but after reading the article, we both knew that…
To my fellow reader, It’s been just over a year since my last blog post and I would hate for you to think I’ve abandoned my platform. 2017 was a year of many firsts as well as the longest period of time I’ve ever spent on my own. Blogging was therapeutic because it helped me feel connected to the people back home and was my lone source of familiarity. The asynchronous nature of blogging boded well…
$€£$ Introduction Trip Overview F.A.Q. Transportation Lodging Local Transit Miscellaneous INTRODUCTION If you take nothing away from this article, have this: I love collecting data and I track almost everything I can, from daily steps to restaurants I eat at to my exact bicycle route from point A to point B. As a result, I'm able to tell you where I was, how I got there, and how much money I spent…
I get asked frequently why I did what I did, so below are my personal reasons. I hope these serve as inspiration as you search for your own reasons to make big changes in your life. 1. Because I had no dependants I’m unmarried, have no kids, and my parents are healthy. At the end of the day, nobody in the world truly needs anything from me right now. In my opinion, the timing could not be…