머니랩 MoneyLab – 지출관리·가계부·예산관리

We spend money. And most of the time, we forget about it.

Money Lab creates 'awareness,' not records.

It makes you feel your spending and helps you understand the flow of money.

At some point, I had become a maximalist. I started buying what I needed, but at some point, I began buying what I 'wanted,' and from then on, 'buying' itself became the goal.

It takes 0.3 seconds to swipe a card once. No, I don't even swipe it these days. It's over with just a single touch of the screen. There is no joy, no hesitation, and not even guilt. However, those 0.3 seconds accumulate to become a month, a bank account, and eventually, the emptiness of one day.

When I return home, delivery boxes are piled up. The boxes placed at the door wait quietly for me, like a greeting from someone. There is anticipation, at least for the moment I cut the tape with a knife and open the lid.

'Ah, I've been waiting for this.'

But when I actually take it out, that feeling is shorter than expected. It vanishes as quickly as the speed at which the packaging is unwrapped. That item is still ‘what I wanted,’ yet for some reason, it feels like ‘something I already knew.’

“Why… did I buy this?”

I mutter to myself. There is no answer. Instead, the thought that there is already a similar item somewhere in the room comes to mind. And then I realize. What I wanted to buy was not the object itself, but the emotion of that moment.

And one day, looking at my credit card bill, I ask myself:

“Why can’t I save money?”

The question is wrong. Money is not at fault.

The problem is that I do not feel my own spending. In an era where mobile payments have become part of daily life, consumption has become faster and payments lighter.

Moments that end with a single finger. Within them, I feel nothing. A life that opens and closes as I pass by, like an automatic door.

Expenses were made, but no memories remain. The ‘pain of payment’ has vanished, and consumption flows into the unconscious. That is why I have been living as if I hadn’t spent money, even though I had.

I decided to try ‘recording.’ To be precise, it was closer to "revisiting" than to recording. It was the act of catching past expenses and bringing them back before my eyes. I wanted to do that properly.

I started very simply. I opened an Excel file. I placed the cursor on the blank screen and couldn't do anything for a while. It wasn't because I didn't know what to write, but because I didn't know where to start looking. I always had money and was always spending it, but I had never once followed that flow to the very end.

So, I broke it down one by one.

I created an expense sheet. As I wrote down the dates, amounts, and categories, the expenses I had previously overlooked without a second thought began to reveal themselves one by one. Coffee, taxis, delivery, convenience stores. They were familiar names, but placed alongside numbers, they felt completely different.

I created a separate sheet for fixed expenses. Money draining out every month. Phone bills, subscription fees, insurance premiums. Things I forget once set up. As I wrote them down line by line, strangely enough, my mind became quiet. "Ah, this is money that goes out anyway." It was the moment when my vague anxiety transformed into a somewhat clearer structure.

I also created an installment plan sheet. That was when I realized that the spending I thought was already finished was actually not yet over. How many months were left, and how much was going out each month. By writing it down in numbers, I could see what choices my future self had already made.

Then, I created a savings sheet. Not to record leftover money, but money that I had set aside in advance. As I started writing that down separately, I felt the sensation of "accumulating" for the first time. It was a very small amount, but I felt strangely good every time that number increased by a line.

Finally, I created a dashboard where I could view all those sheets at a glance. Once expenses, fixed costs, installments, and savings were all gathered on one screen, the whole picture finally began to come into view. The scattered numbers connected into a single flow.

I remember staring at that screen for a long time.

"Ah... so this is how I have been living."

It was the moment I "understood" my money for the first time.

I became a little more ambitious.

Excel was great, but the process of opening a file, navigating to a cell, and manipulating formulas every time was cumbersome. I didn't want to break that flow. It wasn't just about keeping records; it had to become a habit.

So, I started creating an app.

I wanted to use it exactly the way I did, but make it easier, faster, and more natural to ‘look’.

That is how Money Lab began.

In fact, ever since I started developing the app, I held onto one thing:

“I am making this for my own use.”

That was my single criterion.

Therefore, I wanted to remove unnecessary features as much as possible. Things that looked good but were never actually used, things that seemed nice to have but ultimately hindered the flow. I stripped them away one by one. What I had to keep was simple: what was truly necessary and the way Money Lab wanted to preserve.

Among them, the most important was the ‘act of direct input.’

Payments these days are too easy. They are completed with a single finger. As a result, we are becoming increasingly desensitized to them. The pain of payment disappears, and consumption becomes increasingly numb. I wanted to bring that sensation back.

That is why Money Lab does not record automatically. It intentionally makes the user move their hands one more time. That brief moment of entering the amount and noting what it was spent on. During those few seconds, consumption begins to be ‘felt’ again.

However, there was another concern here.

“The input must not become a pain.”

While it is necessary to make users feel the pain of payment again, if the input itself becomes a hassle, people will leave.

So I kept refining it. I reduced the input once, reduced it again, and reduced it again. Where to place buttons so they would think less before pressing them, and what kind of flow would make it naturally connected. I kept fixing even the most trivial details.

The same went for the home screen.

I didn't want to simply make it pretty; I wanted to create a ‘structure that is understandable at a glance.’ Expenses, fixed costs, debt, savings. They may seem meaningless when viewed separately, but I debugged and modified it countless times to ensure the data in each tab flowed naturally.

One day, my son spoke to me.

“Dad! Why is this called ‘Gwanghwamun-deok’s Money Lab’?”

“Because I made it.”

I answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Then my son shook his head.

“People use it, you know. Doesn’t it feel more like mine if it’s under your own name?”

At that moment, I felt something sorting out in my mind.

That this shouldn’t be an app I created, but a tool that people use in their own ways.

So I changed it.

Anyone who enters a nickname becomes ‘OO’s Money Lab.’

The experience of seeing your name written on the screen the moment you first open the app. I wanted people to feel this way at that moment.

“This… is mine.”

So, I designed Money Lab to belong to no one, but to be Money Lab for everyone who uses it.

There is no sign-up. There are no ads. There is no collection of personal information. All core features are available for free.

I want users’ data to be entirely their own. That is why I designed Money Lab so that all data is stored only within the user’s smartphone. Tonight, I uploaded the app bundle for the official launch of ‘MoneyLab’ to the Google Play Console. Then, I launched the app on my smartphone.

“MoneyLab – My Own Space to Understand My Money”

- Sunday, April 26, 2026. After a long journey of eight months and countless hours of debugging, I am finally releasing it to the world. Carrying that excitement and fear... Written by Gwanghwamun Deok