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I built a private money app for my whole family

I made a desktop app called Folio. It keeps all of my family's money in one place — stocks, mutual funds, bank accounts, fixed deposits, insurance, and important papers. It runs fully on my own computer. Nothing goes to the cloud. Only live prices and news are pulled from the internet.

Folio login screen — clear, live and private
The sign-in screen. Locked with a password, works offline.

Why I built it

Our family money was spread all over the place. Some stocks in one app. Bank details in a note. Fixed deposits on a bit of paper. Policy PDFs lost in email. When I wanted a simple answer — "how much do we have in total?" — there was no easy way to see it.

I also did not want to put all of this on some company's server. Money data is private. So I set two hard rules: it must show everything in one place, and the data must never leave my machine.

Folio overview dashboard with net worth, charts and asset split
The home screen — total family net worth, profit/loss, and where the money sits.

This is the first screen. In one look I can see the total family net worth, how much is profit, and how the money is split between stocks, funds, savings and deposits. The numbers update as prices move.

What it can do

Folio is not just one thing — it is a small set of tools that all share the same data. Here is the full list, in plain words:

Plus market news, and one-click Excel import and export so I can move data in and out any time.

Folio stocks page with live prices and profit per holding
Stocks — each holding with live price, value and profit/loss.

The stock and fund pages read the ticker for each holding and fetch the live price. So the profit and loss you see is real-time, not something I typed in.

Folio mutual funds page with live NAV
Mutual funds — matched to their AMFI code for live NAV.
Folio bank and fixed deposit page
Bank & FD — savings and deposits, split by person and by bank.

The AI helper

The part I like most is the AI Analyst. It reads your own numbers and gives a simple review — like a health check on your money. It can suggest what looks risky, what is doing well, and what to think about next. You plug in your own AI key, so the app stays free and private.

Folio AI Analyst with portfolio health check and other modes
AI Analyst — health check, buy/sell/hold ideas, risk flags and more.

How it works (the tech part)

Folio is one desktop app written in Rust. I used Tauri to make it a real Mac app with a proper window and menu. The whole thing is a single program — no separate server to start, no Node, no Docker.

Inside that one program there is a tiny web server running only on 127.0.0.1 (your own machine). It talks to a small SQLite database file. The screen you see is a React app that asks this local server for data. Because the server only listens to your own computer, nothing is open to the internet.

Where your data lives: everything — the database and your uploaded files — sits in one folder on your disk (by default ~/Documents/Folio). You can move it, back it up, or put it on a USB drive. The app just points to that folder. Passwords are encrypted. The only time the app touches the internet is to fetch live prices, news, and (if you ask) the AI review.

RustTauri v2SQLiteaxumReactLocal-onlyEncrypted

The result

Now there is one app I open to see the whole picture. Add a stock, a deposit, or a policy, and it all rolls up into a single number I can trust. It is private (stays on my machine), live (real prices), and all in one place — which is exactly what I wanted from the start.

📌 Note: the family name, the member names (Patel Family, George, Ulrica, Mariana, Mitchel) and all the amounts in the screenshots above are sample data made just for this post — not real people or real money.

Built for my own family, then made general so any family can use it. If you care about keeping your money data on your own computer, this is the kind of app I love making.
#rust#tauri#desktop#privacy#finance