Why I’m building PayDown

Klarna in one app, Affirm in another, a card minimum in a third, and no single place that answers the only question that matters: when am I done?

I've been writing software since 1996 and shipping mobile apps since 2008, and this is the first one I'm building primarily for myself. I sat down with Claude and laid out what I wanted: every payment — monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, BNPL installments — on one schedule, a debt-free date, and suggestions for moving that date up. Personal tool first; if it earns the right to be a business, there's a monetization plan waiting.

Day one produced the unglamorous foundation: a private repo, GitHub Issues split into five milestones (tracker, payoff engine, AI import, beta, monetization), and planning docs for the product, the math, and the marketing.

This blog is the build log for all of it.