From payslip to safe-to-spend, in one platform
“Most budgets fail because they were built for someone else’s life.”
Three questions
Budgeting tools ship one template: fifty categories, a monthly view, and an assumption that money lands on the first and behaves. Owed asks three questions instead, then derives everything from the answers. A freelancer gets a tax set aside and a quiet month buffer. A student paid weekly gets a weekly rhythm. Same app, same morning, two different front screens.
One number
The front screen carries a single figure: what is safe to spend today, once the essentials are covered and the savings have already left. Twenty seconds, once a day, and the decision is made.
Gentle by design
Nothing in the product turns red. An over committed week shows in gold and suggests the adjustment rather than announcing the failure. Bricolage Grotesque, Instrument Sans, IBM Plex Mono for the numbers, harbour blue and the Southern Cross, all carried from the first Owed.
The challenge
People abandon budgeting apps because one template has to fit every life. The tool had to fit the person before it counted a dollar.
What we built
A pay calculator, a payslip reader that lays out every deduction, a bank statement importer for the five major NZ banks, balances across ten currencies, pay-cycle planning and subscriptions, all on one account that syncs quietly across devices.
The outcome
A twenty second daily habit replaced a monthly spreadsheet session, on the same brand and foundations as the first Owed.
What is next
Shared budgets for couples and flats, and sharper pay-cycle forecasting for variable incomes.
Owed, live











