On March 22nd, 2026, I decided to go down the AI builder’s rabbit hole with the goal of learning by doing and building a personal finance product to help people find money clarity. 

This article is the “why” behind the build and the “what” it is that I’m actually building. As such, this article is broken into 2 parts that explore:

It’s 2026, so if you’re asking yourself why I’m building the Duolingo for personal finance, let’s rewind and review how we got here, then we’ll jump into “the what” and discuss CHUMP.  

I’m a millennial and my adult life has been defined by economic uncertainty.

In 2009, I graduated college in my early 20s during a “once in a generation financial crisis”.

In 2020, in my early 30s, the pandemic sparked another “once in a generation financial crisis”.

In 2027, I’ll enter my 40s in a global landscape that’s defined by macro and micro economic uncertainty.

Today in the U.S., and pardon my Spanish, sh*t’s expensive. 

What used to cost $5 now costs $12, which may not seem like a big price increase but it's the same percent increase as purchasing roundtrip flights in the past for $500 that now cost $1,200. Oftentimes, we, as humans, misunderstand percent increases when nominal values are small like the $5 to $12 example, but ask someone to pay $1,200 for roundtrip flights that used to cost $500 and people start to wake up. 

Now, I could probably spend 10,000 words discussing the current and likely future macro global economic and micro United States household and individual financial challenges, but I’d be willing to bet that if you’re reading this, you have a good idea of the topics I’d touch upon. 

In a sentence:

Today’s currency debasement, rising inflation, ubiquitous political dysfunction and foreign wars increase local energy costs and disrupt global supply chains combined with a lack of individual financial literacy make it extremely difficult for people to feel like they’re in control of their financial future.

And, it’s this last sentiment about not feeling like you have control over your financial future that inspired me to start down a path that’s led to CHUMP.

In truth, it was a candid conversation with a dear friend back in February of this year that really hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t remember the exact conversation but the feeling or sentiment shared was one of anxiety provoking uncertainty brought on by a lack of control of both current and likely future finances. A feeling that’s all too prevalent globally, and especially in the U.S. today. 

As a response to this feeling of no longer being in control of one’s financial future, I came across 3 common responses, or avatars, while ideating CHUMP:

All 3 of these avatars are logical responses to having experienced multiple “once in a generation financial crises”.

It was only after mapping out these 3 avatars that I realized that I’m in the radical responsibility group, but not in a "I read every finance book" way or  "I spend my weekends optimizing my portfolio allocation" way. More so in a I know what's going on with my money way. I see the full picture and make decisions from a position of clarity rather than a position of vague survival.

However, even though I track my spending weekly with a custom google sheet, I dread logging into my accounts, which can leave me flying blind. This realization made me question whether I’m truly making decisions from a position of clarity or do I just think I am?

The reality is that I’m not alone, as most people have no idea what they spent yesterday, last week or in the past month. And, if you ask them, they'd likely guess low by hundreds of dollars.

The problem isn't caring, as most people deeply care about where their money goes, but looking means friction and humans hate friction like opening three different banking apps, getting hit with two-factor authentication on each one, cross-referencing a credit card statement from one bank against a checking account at another — and even then, you'd only be seeing pieces and never the whole picture clearly. And, if you avoid the friction and don’t look, you’ll likely feel financially blind and anxious. Like something is probably wrong but you’re not sure what.

It’s this gap between wanting financial clarity and actually having it that CHUMP closes. Because in the world today, clarity isn't optional anymore. It's the table stakes for being in control of your own financial future.

Most of us don't have a money problem. We have a clarity problem. More specifically, a micro clarity problem.

We live in a world that does everything it can to keep financial reality blurry. Tap to pay. Subscribe and forget. Recurring charges that hit once a month and vanish into the noise. Credit cards that separate the feeling of spending from actual cost. So, if you've got a checking account at one bank, a savings account somewhere else, two credit cards from two different issuers, and maybe an investment account you opened three years ago and haven't thought about since, then you've got five accounts across four institutions and the mental overhead to match. 

While that decentralization might just be how the system evolved, the result is that seeing your complete financial picture on any given day requires real effort, and, honestly, who has energy for that? Especially, when there's a chance that one’s current financial situation might stress them out, so they don't look. And, as any good therapist will tell you, avoidance just allows anxiety to grow more. While not looking may feel good in the short-term, it’s actually making things worse in the long-term. You're not avoiding a problem, you're just losing visibility on it while it keeps growing.

So, while the system has done a wonderful job at removing friction from spending money, nothing has replaced the awareness that friction used to force. Nothing has come along that allows us to centrally organize our individual financial chaos into one, easily digestible format. 

Budgeting apps tried. They built dashboards. They sent push notifications. They color-coded your categories and gave you a pretty pie chart at the end of the month, but a pie chart on the last day of the month doesn't nudge you 30 times along the way with information you can actually act on. It's a report card, not clarity. It tells you what happened. It doesn't provide you with info throughout the month to make better choices, and it still requires you to go find it.

The real gap is clarity. The kind that shows up without asking, daily, in a unified view, before the month is over and any potential damage is done. Without it, you can't make better decisions, you can't build new habits, and your relationship with money never actually changes — it just stays vague and stressful and something you'll deal with later. Something you know you need to handle today, but are honestly too tired for the login friction just to potentially be stressed out. 

Money clarity leads to better decisions.

You can't make good decisions without good information. That sounds obvious, but it's the thing most financial tools get wrong. They give you information after the fact, when the decisions have already been made. CHUMP puts the information in your hands daily, so the decisions you make throughout the month are actually informed ones.

Money decisions or money moves, as I call them, don't have to be dramatic. You don’t need to overhaul your budget or swear you’ll make big lifestyle changes when you get your next raise. Small, daily iterative calibrations are really where change lies:

“I've already spent $200 on food this week — maybe I cook tonight. Oh, that subscription auto-renewed. I forgot I had that. I should cancel it. I'm actually doing better than I thought this month. Maybe I move $50 extra to savings.”

These aren't big moments, but rather intentional decisions made with real information. These small decisions made consistently compound the same way invested money does. One huge lifestyle change may not alter your financial life, but thirty of them a month, every month, for a year? That's a different person making those decisions by the end of it. That's a new habit. That's a new relationship with money. That’s money clarity.

Better decisions lead to investing and saving.

When you can see your money clearly, you can find margin. Not always a lot, but a little moved consistently into an investment strategy, does something that a lot of people never get to experience: it starts to grow without you.

A 30,000 foot goal of CHUMP that I’ve never shared publicly before is that I hope it provides people money clarity, so they can find margin, and then invest that margin. 

Investing and saving lead to control over your future.

Here's the thing nobody tells you early enough about money: 

You have to build the habits and systems to find clarity, then the habit of better choices, then the habit of moving money into places where it grows — and only then does the math start working in your favor.

Most people want to skip to the end. They want to know what to invest in, what the best savings account is, how to retire early. But the bottleneck isn't knowledge. It's behavior. And behavior changes through informed and intentional repetition, not resolution. 

CHUMP is a text-based daily financial companion. You link your bank accounts and every day you get a text from CHUMP with a simple spending summary: 

No app. No dashboard. Just a daily text. 

When you reply to CHUMP’s daily text, even just with an emoji, you keep your streak alive. Do that 7 days in a row and CHUMP starts to feel less like a tool and more like a habit. Get to 30 days in a row and you start making different choices without even thinking about it, because the awareness is just there now. 

I titled this newsletter “I’m Building The Duolingo For Personal Finance”, because like learning a new language, repetition and consistency around money is a winning formula.

CHUMP distilled into a sentence: One minute a day for money clarity. 

To get this clarity, you don't need to become a finance person, financial literacy wonk or have a custom google sheet, you just need to look and CHUMP handles the looking for you.

Every day, CHUMP pulls your data from Plaid, formats it clearly, and texts you. You review it, ask CHUMP questions, and in just sixty seconds you’re building a priceless habit that will lead to more control over your financial future.

That's it. That's CHUMP. 

I’m building CHUMP, because I've watched smart, capable people stress about money their entire lives, and I don't think the answer is another app.

I think it’s a simple chat about your spending every day, for one minute. Let that become the foundation of your financial life, and build from there.

The phone is already in your hand and the text is already coming. All you have to do is just reply.

Money clarity for one minute a day sounds cheap, doesn’t it?

That's CHUMP. That's what I'm building.

CHUMP launched publicly on the 8th of August 2026 and if you use the code NEWSLETTER, you can get a FREE month!

To learn more about CHUMP, visit hichump.com and remember your streak starts on day one.

As always – nothing replaces action.

See you next Tuesday.