Savings, or why I make applications?

Today, I’ve finished Savings — small SaaS that allows you to track your savings goal. I want to share a story why I decided to create this application. But this will be something more, this blog post will present what drives me as a maker. I’ll share reasons why I’m preferring to build something instead of play Diablo III on Nintendo Switch.

What is Savings?

As I mentioned before, Savings is an app that allows you to track your savings/earning goal. For example, you decided to save 36000 dollars in the 2018 year. It is easy to compute that you must save $3k each month. If you manage to save that amount each month, your saving goal will be completed on 100 percent. But what will be your goal completion when you in January save $2326,97, in February $2100 and in March $1900? Furthermore, what will be your final completion if this trend will continue? Savings help you collect this data and answer that questions.
The application is divided into two parts. Left panel will allow configuring your goal. Right one collects an amount of money saved each month and presents completion of your goals.

How was Savings build and how it works?

I wrote Savings in Angular 7 using Firebase as a database and hosting backend. I wanted to that application be easy and quick to use. I decided to not use any authentication method. When you visit https://tomakeornottomake.com/savings you will be redirected to a unique URL. This URL will give you access to your data. Save it and don’t share with anybody!
When you visit your unique page URL, data are downloaded from Cloud Firestore. Firestore is a NoSQL database created by Firebase team. After hitting Save Changed buttons data are sent back to the database.

Why I created Savings?

Did you remember an example of the $36k saving goal? This example is real. I decided to save 36k PLN (Polish złoty) during 2018. To track that goal I created Number spreadsheet, where I wrote my results and formulas for predictions. This is how it looks.

When Product Hunt announces Makers Festival — a hackathon event for makers — I decided to transform Savings into a web application. This application can be useful not only for me but also for other. I’m also coming up with another idea of how to use Savings. You can track your earnings. I’m following Andrey Azimov who is doing a Hardcore Year. He wants to earn $1k each month (recurring) from shipping products. You can read more about this on https://www.andreyazimov.com. His earnings can be tracked in Savings as well.
BTW: My savings goal taken from Savings look like this:

Why I make things?

I promise you that I’ll explain why I make things and what drives me as a maker. The first part of an answer — I want to make my life easier. This is why I created Countdowns. I created it because I want to use it and couldn’t find one. Then, after a few months, I decided to make it public. And this is the second part of an answer — I want to make other life easier.
A situation with Savings is quite similar. This spreadsheet helps me, and I thought that it may help others as well.

How to reach you?

If you want to know more about what I’m doing — please follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kamilpowalowski. Link to all my current project are available on https://tomakeornottomake.com