MARK BERLADYN

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PERSONAL PROJECT

IOS

2025 — PRESENT

Vault

AI Finance Assistant

A mobile finance tracker with an AI consultant built into the core — designed to make financial independence accessible to everyone.

01 — THE PROBLEM

People don't know what they don't know.

A few friends told me the same thing in the same week: no idea where their money was going, credit card debt, nothing saved. When I dug deeper I realized this wasn't just my circle — it was everywhere.

The root cause was twofold. People don't track finances because it's tedious and results aren't immediate. But there's a deeper problem: basic financial knowledge is missing.

I talked to people actively looking for investments yielding 8% while carrying credit card debt at 28%. They weren't making bad decisions on purpose. Nobody taught them this in school.

02 — RESEARCH

Two groups.
One pattern.

I ran two types of interviews.

First — people with no financial system, to understand the pain. Consistent pattern: one income source, no tracking, savings in cash, debt on cards, no plan.

Then I found people who had actually reached financial independence — a yacht broker in the US, a large auto dealer, a developer, an investor, a gaming business owner.

Very different paths, one consistent pattern: they all worked the same four levers.

That became the foundation of the product.

INCOME

EXPENSES

DEBT

SAVING

The four levers every financially independent person works — regardless of industry, background, or starting point.

03 — KEY DESIGN DECISIONS

Every choice
has a reason.

Decision 01

4 levers, not
infinite categories

Most finance apps overwhelm users with analytics. I designed everything around four levers — income, expenses, savings, debt. The dashboard shows each lever with month-over-month delta.

Simple enough to understand in 10 seconds, powerful enough to change behavior.

Decision 02

Data entry
almost invisible

The biggest reason people abandon finance apps is manual logging. I designed three input methods to remove the friction entirely.

01

Upload bank statement

CSV or PDF → app categorizes everything automatically. One credit card statement gives you expenses, categories, debt balance, and interest rate in one tap.

02

Photo a receipt

OCR reads and creates the transaction automatically.

03

Just say it

"Coffee 5 dollars" → app creates the transaction, picks the category, adds the date.

Decision 03

FIRE number as a compass

After onboarding the app shows your FIRE number — the capital needed to live without working — and how many years away you are at current pace.

Each lever shows its impact in years, not abstract percentages.

"At your current pace — 18 years. Increase savings rate by 8% — 12 years."

Every financial decision gets a concrete consequence.

Decision 04

Motivation through small wins

Finance apps create guilt. Vault creates momentum. Pay off a credit card — get a sticker. Complete a checklist item — earn a reward. Small, but it builds a habit where other apps build anxiety.

Decision 05

Duplicate detection

When connecting bank API, the same transaction could appear twice. A deduplication system matches by amount, merchant name, and timestamp within a 5-minute window — invisible to the user, essential for data integrity.

04 — STATUS

Live & growing.

MVP launched and being used by early testers. Currently designing Bank API connection flow and iterating based on user feedback.

Built together with a backend developer. Research conducted with 10+ interview participants across two user groups.

10+

research participants

2

user groups studied

4

core design levers

MVP

live with testers

Mark Berladyn

PORTFOLIO

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