Despite dropping out of school at  the age of 15, Southlander Jack Ridder is developing an app which aims to help relieve some stress around the cost of living.

 Called KiwiBudget, it has been in development since January, however the idea first came to him while working in a supermarket.

“Seeing all the people struggle with money there helped me get the idea for my app.”

He has been interested in tech and coding for his whole life, getting his start creating online Minecraft servers when he was 8.

Previously he developed an app which aimed to be a business-to-business app for retail.

“I had a few meetings with Foodstuffs about it but they were already developing a system similar to what I had. That’s when I came up with KiwiBudget.”

Since then he has been a one-man team developing the app and forming his own company, Bryder Holdings Ltd, Invercargill.

He said being a solo developer in the deep South was “a bit different”, compared to bigger cities further up the country.

“I haven’t found anyone else to connect with to help develop it … think it’s more lonely in Southland.”

Spending  an average of 16 hours a day working can be strenuous, but he was grateful for the odd freelancer that pitches in sometimes.

KiwiBudget connects to banking data through an open finance platform called Akahu, a process which he said was secure with regulations and passkeys in place.

“It shows your income, expenses, and what you have for the rest of the week. When you click on it, you can see where it’s all going and it’s all categorised.”

He said there are AI features integrated ,but they are turned off by default.

“It’s a budgeting app tailored to the working class … some apps that I tried were mainly tailored to business.”

He said his main target audience was university students as he saw living was “a real struggle for them”.

“They don’t get much student allowance and things like groceries are always so expensive.”

The app also includes StudyLink and MyMSD integration which he highlighted as important for students.

“There’s a big lack of finance education, I wish there was a subject in school for it.”

“There was like a business sort of subject at my school, but it wasn’t about how to manage your money.”

From doing pricing at his supermarket job, he gained a good insight into the real cost of groceries.

“I could see the profit and loss … groceries are really expensive now, even Pak’nSave is getting expensive now.”

He wanted people  such as solo parents, or those with families, to have a tool so they could manage their money.

With KiwiBudget comes a grocery list tool where you can input your budget for the week and receive a list of how much essentials  such as milk cost.

He is working on building the system to also integrate a community function where users can report grocery prices similar to the popular Gaspy app.

Although the app launch is fast approaching, so is tertiary education. Mr Ridder is set to start a foundation certificate at the University of Otago next year.

KiwiBudget is set to launch  on November 16 and will be free with different monthly subscription tiers on offer, having different functions.

tayler.mutton@alliedmedia.co.nz