The part nobody else does
Private records that still count
Most shared budgets give you one choice. Everything is visible to the household, or you keep a second app nobody else knows about.
Homefire splits it finer. A single purchase, or an entire account, can be hidden from the rest of the family. The amount still joins the household totals, so the budget stays true, while the category and the shop stay with you.
- An owner, adults and children, each seeing a different amount
- Join a family by scanning a QR code
- Per-account rules for who can see it and who can add to it
- Children never see the family-wide view
One honest caveat, because you would find it yourself. In a household of exactly two people who both share their totals, one person can subtract and infer the other's private sum. The app says so too.
Where it went
The month, the quarter, the year
Spending by category, by person and over time, for you alone or for the whole household. The comparison against last month is the number most people actually act on.
Private amounts join the totals as one pooled line. They never enter a category, because a category is a detail.
What it is for
Goals you are actually saving toward
Name the thing, put money aside, and watch what is left to go. A goal can be backed by a real account or an investment, so the progress bar reflects money that exists rather than an intention.
- Back a goal with an account or a holding, not just a number
- A target date, and whether you are on track for it
- Shared goals the household saves into together
- Personal goals only you can see
The long game
Deposits, bonds and funds
Track savings deposits, bonds down to the individual coupon, and funds. Homefire fetches prices and exchange rates so a portfolio in three currencies still totals correctly.
Entered by hand, like everything else. Nothing here reaches into a broker account.
- Deposits with their rate, term and accrued interest
- Bonds with a coupon schedule and a reminder before each payment
- Funds and shares, valued at the last price fetched
- Returns that show a dash rather than a guess when data is missing
The business model, in full
Why it is free
I build Homefire alone and pay for the server myself. There is no paid tier, no trial that expires, and no in-app purchase that can be taken away later. If it becomes useful to you, there is a donation link.
I say this plainly because a free money app usually means the data is the product, and after Mint closed that suspicion is earned. So here is the whole arrangement, in specifics you can check.
No bank connection, ever
Homefire never asks for a bank login because it never connects to one. You type what you spend, or scan a receipt QR code that is decoded on your phone and never uploaded.
Nothing to break
The most common complaint about every paid app in this category is that the sync stopped working. There is nothing here to reconnect when a bank decides it is time, and nothing that quietly stops importing while you assume it worked.
No analytics, including here
The app carries no advertising and no trackers. Neither does this page: no fonts, no scripts, no pixels, nothing loaded from anyone else. View the source and check. An independent scan by Exodus Privacy found none.
Your data leaves whole
Export what you have entered whenever you want. Delete the account from inside the app or from the web, with a thirty day window to change your mind.
Before you spend an evening on it
What it does not do yet
These are the reasons someone would install Homefire and then leave, so they belong on the front page rather than in a review.
- Android and the browser only. There is no iPhone version yet.
- Roubles, euros and dollars. Pounds, rupees, and Canadian or Australian dollars are not supported, so those households cannot really use it.
- English, German, French, Italian and Russian.
- No automatic import from anywhere. Every figure is one somebody typed.
- No desktop layout. The browser version is the phone app in a window.
Have a look before you commit
The browser version runs the same code as the app. Open the demo household, poke at it, and decide whether the idea suits you before you install anything or type a single real number.