Behind the Build: Creating FutureTree as a Systems-Thinker

Most financial tools today are designed with one thing in mind: control. Control your spending, control your debt, control your savings. They focus on line items and monthly totals, encouraging you to manage your money in a way that feels precise, almost mechanical. And while control is important, it doesn’t reflect the way life — or money — really works.

I built FutureTree from a different perspective: systems thinking. Instead of asking, “How do I control every dollar?” I asked, “How do I understand the interactions, flows, and branching outcomes that emerge from financial decisions over time?” This article is both a founder’s story and a philosophy piece — why FutureTree exists, what makes it different, and why I believe the future of personal finance needs to be systemic, not just transactional.

My Journey to FutureTree

Like many people, I started managing my finances with spreadsheets. They worked, but they always felt brittle. One unexpected expense and the whole sheet broke down. Later, I experimented with budgeting apps. They helped track spending but gave me little insight into the bigger picture. They could tell me where my money went, but not where my choices might lead.

Professionally, I’ve spent over 20 years as a software engineer, often working on complex systems — from embedded devices to government-scale health tech. In every project, one truth stood out: the health of a system depends not just on its parts but on how those parts interact. A strong component in a weak system still fails. A weak component in a well-integrated system can thrive.

That same truth applies to personal finance.

Systems Thinking in Personal Finance

Systems thinking is about seeing wholes, not just parts. It focuses on connections, feedback loops, and emergent behavior. When applied to money, it means asking questions like:

• How does today’s decision ripple out over months or years?
• What happens if several variables change at once?
• Where are the hidden reinforcing or balancing loops in my financial life?

Traditional budgeting answers “How much do I have left this month?” Systems thinking asks, “What futures are being shaped by my current patterns, and how resilient are they to change?”

Why I Built FutureTree

I wanted a tool that did three things:

1. Map Branching Futures Life is not linear. Every choice — buying a house, changing jobs, starting a family — creates branches. FutureTree models these as scenarios, so you can see not just one future but many.

2. Visualize Complexity Clearly Numbers in a spreadsheet can overwhelm. I wanted visuals — trees, timelines, graphs — that make patterns intuitive. Complexity doesn’t go away, but clarity makes it navigable.

3. Integrate Variables, Not Isolate Them Budgeting apps silo spending, saving, and investing. FutureTree integrates them, showing how they interact as a system. For example: how an interest rate hike affects not just your mortgage but your retirement savings and lifestyle choices.

Building the Engine

At the heart of FutureTree is a financial simulation engine. It doesn’t just total your expenses. It calculates transaction events over time, applies rules for compounding interest, adjusts for inflation, and handles branching scenarios. Think of it as a “what if” calculator on steroids.

• You input budgets, savings goals, or investments.
• The engine simulates outcomes day by day.
• It projects forward, showing you the trajectories of wealth over time.

From there, you can branch: What if I spend less here? What if I increase savings? What if markets dip? Each branch becomes a new path on the tree.

The Design Philosophy

FutureTree isn’t just software; it’s an expression of systems thinking in practice. Three principles guided the design:

1. Transparency Over Black Boxes Financial tools often hide assumptions. FutureTree makes variables explicit. You can see what drives outcomes — no magic numbers.

2. Exploration Over Prescription Instead of telling you what to do, FutureTree helps you explore possibilities. It’s about agency, not instruction.

3. Integration Over Isolation Life doesn’t happen in silos. FutureTree shows how housing, career, family, and investments intersect financially.

The Challenges of Building FutureTree

Designing a forecasting engine wasn’t the hard part — my engineering background made that feasible. The harder challenge was usability. Systems thinking can be overwhelming if presented poorly. My biggest design question was: How do I make complex branching futures understandable without oversimplifying them?

The solution was to embrace visual clarity. A branching tree metaphor became the backbone. Instead of drowning users in data, FutureTree lets them see futures unfold. You don’t need to be a finance expert; you need to be curious.

Why Systems Thinking Matters for You

Most people approach money transactionally: paycheck comes in, bills go out, savings go up (hopefully). But systemic health comes from integration. By adopting a systems view of your finances, you:

• Recognize the long-term impact of small changes
• See risks and opportunities before they become urgent
• Build resilience against shocks

It’s the difference between patching leaks in a boat and understanding how the whole vessel handles a storm.

A Different Kind of Financial Tool

FutureTree isn’t trying to replace financial planners, nor is it just another budgeting app. It’s a new category: a branching financial forecasting tool. It doesn’t promise certainty. Instead, it gives you clarity, adaptability, and foresight.

If budgeting is about managing the present, and planning is about setting goals, then forecasting — done systemically — is about navigating uncertainty with confidence.

Looking Ahead

FutureTree is still evolving. My vision is to add an AI agent that doesn’t just model your choices but also suggests real-world alternatives: better loan options, investment opportunities, lifestyle changes. It’s about connecting the abstract model to practical action.

But no matter how advanced it becomes, FutureTree will stay grounded in the same principle: your financial life is a system, and healthy systems require integration, not isolation.

Closing Thoughts

I built FutureTree because I wanted a tool that reflects reality: uncertain, branching, interconnected. Systems thinking gave me the lens to design it, and software engineering gave me the means to build it.

If you’ve ever felt like your budget doesn’t capture the real complexity of your life, or that traditional tools leave you unprepared for the unknown, FutureTree was built for you.

FutureTree is launching soon. Join the early access list [here] to start exploring your financial system — not just your balance sheet.