For one Calgary couple, reaching a relationship milestone meant taking on the daunting task of reviewing their personal finances, which motivated them to build Waypoint Budget, an app that makes it easier for other Canadians to do the same. 

Last year, Ahmed Jamal and Florencia Chomski celebrated their engagement with a three-week vacation in Italy. But when the initial elation subsided, they came home to a reality that many young adults share: starting a life together and planning a wedding is expensive.

The pair packed pens and paper and talked about money over coffee at House 831, a café along 17 Avenue SW. From reviewing their spending to setting goals, they started sketching out what they wanted their wedding to look like.

“We started seeing, when we started mapping out our finances and our goals, that we were spending so much, and on categories that we didn’t even realize,” said Jamal.

Writing and calculating everything physically worked for a little bit, but became a cumbersome task over time. They said the same about switching to an Excel spreadsheet, but the couple yearned for a digital platform that reflected the specific metrics that they were working with. 

Conveniently, the recent fiancés met while taking computer science at UBC Okanagan. Jamal and Chomski have since specialized in technical and design development, respectively, which gave them the expertise needed to bring their vision to fruition.

Enter Calgary’s newest finance app

Since its December 2025 launch, Waypoint Budget has garnered nearly 1,000 users. However, it isn’t technically an ‘app,’ but rather a progressive web app. This means users sign up online and can bookmark the page on their smartphone’s home screen. 

Jamal said that the program functions the same as a regular app, with notification-sending capabilities. He explained that not offering it on Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store has saved them a good chunk in operating costs. 

“It’s helped us basically save 30 per cent, which we could be giving Apple,” said Jamal.

“We can then save costs for customers instead, so it’s pretty cool.”

Right now, the pair said the app is fully funded through subscriptions, GoFundMe, or from their own pockets, as they have not yet received startup funding from the provincial government. Users can choose between paying $7.99 a month or paying $79.99 for the year.

No matter the income route, they said the app is entirely funded by residents at both the local and national level, which aligns with the platform’s motto of being a personal finance resource made by Canadians, for Canadians. 

On the app’s dashboard, it features an industry-standard overview of the user’s financial trends through personalized graphs calculated from transactions synced securely from the user’s banking institution. 

What makes the app special, however, is that it is true north through and through — it defaults to Canada’s currency, market, and banks. 

Canadian all the Way(point)

Jamal said that most consumer budgeting apps are US-based, and that paying a USD subscription for something biased toward America’s banks and interest rates is often a hassle. He said this was the gap they were trying to fill. 

“My hope is that more people trust us over these bigger U.S. alternatives,” said Jamal. 

“No hate to them, but I feel like we can do something, as well. Canadians are capable.”

Doing this hasn’t been an easy feat, though. Chomski explained that, because open banking — also called consumer-driven banking, which permits residents to share their financial information with the tech company of their choosing — is not yet available in Canada, and connecting the app to national banks is a much more challenging process than connecting to US banks. 

“One issue that we see time and time again is bank connection issues,” she said. 

“It’s not all of them, but we do see some issues that would 100 per cent be solved by open banking.”

Despite this, the pair said that jumping through the hoops has been worth it and that they will continue working at it in the future. Additionally, they’re planning to roll out free financial education resources on their website.

They said that learning to better manage their money is a lesson they were never taught, and that their ability to teach Canadians how to be financially responsible will define the app’s success. 

“I just feel like I never had the opportunity to learn about how to manage my finances,” said Jamal.

“I just hope that more Canadians and more Calgarians come across this app.”