Why Porul

The problem

Most money apps are built around a bank feed and a wall of categories. You connect an account, the app files each transaction under a label, and you end up with a report that says what happened but not how you felt about it or what to do next. They also ask for a lot of trust: your bank login, your data on someone else’s server.

Two other questions rarely get a straight answer:

• “What does it cost me just to exist for one day?” Rent, EMIs, school fees and subscriptions are spread across the year, so no single month tells you.
• “What is my loan really costing me?” The number on the bank’s letter and the number the maths gives you are not always the same.

How Porul handles it

Porul (பொருள்) is a Tamil word that means both wealth and meaning. The app is built on that idea: money is worth tracking because of what it means in your life.

Porul is a private money diary with five parts, plus a separate Cash Book.

1. Kakeibo diary. You log each expense in a few taps and tag it as a Need, a Want or an Oops. Kakeibo is a Japanese household-ledger habit built on reflection rather than restriction.
2. Daily Life Cost. One number on your home screen: what it costs you to live for a day, from every expense you logged in the last year. See Daily Life Cost.
3. Ready to plan budget. Income minus fixed bills leaves your Ready to plan money. It shrinks only when you actually pay, repay or save. See Budget.
4. Loan calculator. Compare your bank’s EMI with the fair EMI, see the schedule, and try prepayment plans. See Loans.
5. Goal calculator. Project a goal with compound growth and track its milestones. See Goals.

Need to keep a shop’s takings, a wedding or a trip apart from your daily expenses? The Cash Book gives each its own book of money in and money out, and move an amount into your diary only when you choose. See Cash Book.

Three principles run through all of it:

• Numbers, not verdicts. Porul is a calculator, not an adviser. It shows facts and figures and never tells you what you should do with your money.
• Private by design. Your data lives on your phone. There is no Porul server holding your finances. Backups go to your own Google Drive or iCloud. See Backup and privacy.
• Your currency, your format. Pick from every currency in circulation and a number format (for example 1,000,000, 10,00,000 or 1.000.000,00). Amounts use your currency’s own decimals, and the choice applies across the whole app.

Each home screen also carries a short couplet from the Thirukkural, the ancient Tamil work of wisdom by Thiruvalluvar.

Example

Priya earns 5,000 a month. Her fixed bills come to 1,800. Her Ready to plan is 3,200.

She logs a 40 coffee as a Want and a 300 grocery run as a Need. Her Ready to plan is now 2,860. Nothing is “over” or “under” a category limit. Her home screen simply shows her Need, Want and Oops totals side by side, along with her Daily Life Cost, so she can decide for herself.

Who it’s for

• People who want a simple daily habit instead of a bank-linked dashboard.
• People with a loan who want to understand its real cost.
• People who prefer their financial data to stay on their own device.

Porul works on iPhone and Android. Continue with Getting started.