by Mark Schreiber, Salary.sg guest contributor
Salary.sg is pleased to interview the software developer of a new mobile personal finance app. Meiwin Fu is a software engineer with 10 years of experience under his belt. Currently working at a small startup in Singapore, he builds software products for enterprises.
The name of Meiwin’s personal finance app is “Clara”. It is designed to help the user perform money management tasks “easily and effortlessly”. Download the Clara iOS app today (click this link to install from App Store).
Interview
Salary.sg: You’re an entrepreneur here in Singapore who has published several personal finance apps, including Piggie and now Clara. How can Clara benefit our readers here at Salary.sg?
Meiwin: I believe that everyone would love to know that they are good with their money, that is you work hard to earn it, spend responsibly and invest to grow it.
In Singapore, living cost is undeniably high compare to other countries in the world. Adding to that, we are living at a time when spending money is so easy that it only takes a single click of a mouse or a tap of a finger on your phone to do it. Not to mention that brands are getting better at making you think that you should buy their product because you need it, although you probably don’t.
And so it is very important that you are constantly aware about your spending rate. Clara is an iPhone app built to help you to do just that, keeping track of your income and expenses. If you have been in situations where you overspend your money at the end of month, you are not alone.
Salary.sg: There are already a lot of personal finance and money management apps and platforms. Our readers might be familiar with Mint, to mention one. How is Clara different?
Meiwin: Mint is an online service, which means that they require users to provide certain information like bank account info, and not everyone will be comfortable doing that.
Clara is completely offline. It means user data is stored only in the device. It focuses on providing the simplest and most frictionless user interface to record transactions as they happen.
It is also designed with an interface that provides information such as current month’s spending and savings, with the ability to see breakdowns by categories. It gives users current information as they need it. This would help to achieve your savings goal.
Salary.sg: I assume you named Clara after your daughter. Why?
Meiwin: Initially I wanted to name it Clarity. But later realize I could use Clara, my daughter’s middle name, which still sounds close to Clarity. I am happy with the name. It feels very personal to me.
