Idaho software engineer develops Lucky Friday app to aid financial management

Luck played no part in the equation.

With an extremely sick child and mounting medical debt, Kelly Bauman, a local software engineer by trade, knew she had to put her computer expertise to use to help save her family financially.

“We had to really get serious and start to understand our finances, to figure out where all of our money was going and what we could do differently,” said Bauman, who was born in Sun Valley but eventually graduated from Boise High School. “That was some of the original inspiration for wanting to build an app.”

As was the blessing in disguise that led to both she and her husband, Garrett, being let go on the same day from their software engineering positions with Vant4ge (pronounced Vantage), a Salt Lake City-based outfit specializing in prison management software.

“I felt an immediate sense of relief. I had been working really long hours and it was stressful,” Bauman said. “So when I got the call, I took a short break, smiled and got on my computer and went to work.”

And no lucky charms were necessary for her to create Lucky Friday, now available on the App Store and the web, a finance tool developed to help those struggling with money learn how to budget and to get on track fiscally.

For a nominal monthly or yearly fee, Lucky Friday helps people track spending, manage budgets, monitor net worth, and connect to their bank accounts. There is also a free version.

And these days, personal finance is not exactly considered a strong area for many individuals. According to a recent Vanguard consumer survey, nearly three-quarters of Americans failed to meet spending and savings goals last year.

The report highlighted the growing number of young people in their 30s and 40s struggling to build emergency savings, delaying investing and taking on too much debt.

Bauman can certainly relate to the debt struggle, though hers was a result of a sick child.

However, before launching the app and using what she learned from reducing household costs, negotiating hospital bills and saving money, there was also no shortage of naysayers or those who politely “suggested” that she and her husband throw in the towel, financially speaking.

“A lot of people told us we should just file for bankruptcy,” Bauman said. “But we felt we had the strong will to learn anything that we could put our minds to. And that is what we did here. You can come out of any situation you are in. For us it was medical debt. Which is huge for many people and often leads to bankruptcy.”

Resiliency, a trait she learned long ago when, as a high school student, she’d take apart her parents’ computer to work on it, a trade she eventually turned into a side-gig to earn extra money while in college.

But it was during the time she was at home with her first child that she found inspiration. Out of boredom, she picked up her husband’s computer science books and learned how to code, which soon led to some freelance website work.

Before long, she had been hired as a software developer by Neoreef, a Boise business web design, development and hosting company. Next came a stint as a software engineer for LiveRez in Eagle, specializing in vacation rental software.

Little did she know there’d be no time for vacations for her anytime soon. After about two years, that pink slip from Vant4ge made its way onto her personal spreadsheet.

“I thought this was somewhere I could work and a product I could stand behind that is doing good work to get people out of our prison systems,” she said. “To now be forced to have the time I had been looking for, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

Using her own personal life and relevant experiences in the software world as a starting point, she spent two and half years developing and fine-tuning Lucky Friday, named for the silver, lead and zinc mine she once drove past in the Coeur d’Alene Mining District in northern Idaho, along with the notion of Friday being associated with payday.

“As an Idaho native, I always wanted the name to have some type of homage to Idaho,” she said. “I saw the sign and I knew that was the right name.”

Having spent eight years on Wall Street working for J.P. Morgan, Amber Dolphin King also believes it’s the right time for Kelly’s app to help provide a pathway for those struggling financially.

“We know people need help and feel overwhelmed,” said Dolphin King, who today serves as a regional vice president for Horizon Credit Union. “And as inflation comes, we want to empower them. Her passion and story is so powerful to help people feel financially empowered.”

As the past president of the Idaho Financial Literacy Coalition (IFLC), a nonprofit organization that aims to empower individuals across all life stages by providing essential education on personal finance topics, it was Bauman, said Dolphin King, who reached out to the group that now fully supports her app.

“At IFLC, we want to facilitate content and the coalition serves as the hub,” she said. “The app has real-life applications and is user-friendly. Her ‘why’ is as powerful as anyone I connect with who develops a tool such as this for so many who can use it.”

Both sides of the ledger agree: It’s all about helping people take ownership of their financial future and understanding where their money goes.

“You have to figure out systems that make it easy enough to understand what your behaviors are,” Dolphin King said. “And if you become aware, you can then execute on what you want.”

And education, they both strongly feel, is the key in what has become a more highly complicated financial world.

“I think it is tragic to come out of high school as an 18-year-old adult who frankly doesn’t know the difference between a debit card and an actual credit card,” she said.

That is where Lucky Friday comes into play. “Built for real life” and “making money make sense at a glance” is how Bauman describes the three-tier app — $12.99 monthly, $99 annually or the basic free version available to anyone who chooses to use it.

“We consider ourselves to be a mission-driven company that truly wants to help people across all spectrums of wealth to do better,” she said. “That idea is at the heart of every decision I have made.”

According to Bauman, she built the entire product herself, including the frontend, backend and the infrastructure with no co-founder or engineering team. “My background in financial software meant I understood exactly what it would take to build something people could trust with their banking data.”

She also emphasized the careful manner in which she went about creating the proper algorithms to help ensure safety and security for Lucky Friday users.

“From the moment I sat down to do this, security was at the forefront of my mind even though I am not moving money or subject to those types of regulations,” she said. “But I still built the app in the same sense as if I were.”

And she stressed no users, paid or free, will be inundated with predatory advertisements.

“There are lots of predatory ads for people in bad financial spots or who are trying to improve their lives with their spending,” she said. “This separates my company from others. What makes us different is the level of user control.”

By name, the app may sound fun, but there are no gaming components associated with it.

“In the development process it was so hard seeing people recommend building a game component into the software because it will sell better,” Bauman said. “That is just the opposite of what I am trying to do. I don’t want people to think this app is a game, that they can earn points or rewards of some kind in order to manage their money.”

Or as Dolphin King acknowledges, using a tool like Lucky Friday can help some avoid becoming part of that 75% without an emergency savings fund, and who may have to rely on situational short-term lending connected to outrageous interest rates.

“If you run into a situation where you just need a boost due to a life event, that is one thing,” she said. “But if it becomes a habit, and it is consistent, then your financial hole just gets bigger and bigger.

“Whatever can inspire people to do better and to be better so they can get to where they want to go, that is exciting. And I believe this app does that.”

Simply put, it’s all about financial literacy, for anyone at any age.

“People who don’t make enough to afford their lifestyle are often afraid to look into their finances,” Bauman said. “I even met one individual making $1 million yearly who was living paycheck to paycheck. They just need to look at their spending.”