About Me
My name is John Engstrom and BudgetSnap is an online personal finance manager that I built for privacy-minded people like me.
If you are going to trust your financial information with BudgetSnap you should get to know me.
I was born in Reno, Nevada in 1966. My family moved to California when I was 1 year old and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area until 1976 when my family moved to Porterville, CA. In the 80's I was lucky enough to learn basic programming on the Apple Computer bus that was touring the state and teaching kids about the Apple II.
Fast forward to 1994 and I started running one of the first all graphics BBS in San Francisco. RoboBoard rocks!
By 1996 I had moved to New York City and started creating websites. In 1999 I received funding for to develop a browser-based groupware package that I created in 1997. After the great internet bust of 2000 I started making software weekly newspapers on the East Coast. In 2003 I started creating social networking websites and I created and managed an online dating website targeting New York Singles.
By 2003 I hade three mortgages, two car payments and a zillion monthly bills. My spending was beserker and I needed something more than a spreadsheet. I had been toying with the idea of turning my spreadsheet into a web application for a while and by the end of 2004 I had created a simple system for managing my budget online.
In 2005 I decided to make a public version of my web-based personal finance manager. A year later BudgetSnap went live on April 15, 2006.
It's been 18 months since version 1.0 and I'm happy to announce the 2.0 beta!
Take our tour to learn more about the evolution of BudgetSnap, where I started, and where I am today.
