The friction is the feature

Think about it. You connect your bank, and suddenly you have colorful charts showing exactly where your money went last month.

Great. Now what?

That's like a diet app that only tells you what you already ate. “You consumed 3,400 calories yesterday. Here's a pie chart.” Thanks. Very helpful. You already knew you ate the pizza. The app just made you feel worse about it.

Information isn't transformation.

Knowing where your money went doesn't change where it goes next. If awareness after the fact worked, we'd all be financially healthy by now. We have more data about our spending than any generation in history.

Something else is needed.

Real change happens in one specific moment: the space between impulse and action.

That half-second when you reach for your wallet. The brief hesitation before you tap “Buy Now.” The instant when a want becomes a purchase.

Most apps miss this moment entirely. They're focused on reporting—telling you what happened after the decision was already made.

Solvent is different. When you manually enter a transaction, you create a pause. A moment of awareness. You feel the amount leaving. You consciously choose the category. You make the spending real in a way that auto-sync can never replicate.

This isn't inconvenience. It's intervention.

There's a reason this works, and it's not mystical—it's neurological.

When you physically record a purchase, multiple things happen in your brain. You engage your motor cortex (the act of entering). You activate your prefrontal cortex (conscious categorization). You create a memory anchor that's stronger than passive observation.

Studies on spending behavior consistently show that cash users spend less than card users. Not because cash is magical—because it creates friction. You feel it leaving.

Digital payments removed that friction. Auto-tracking apps removed even more. We've made spending so frictionless that most people genuinely don't know how much they spend.

Solvent adds friction back—strategically, intentionally, and in service of your goals.

This is where philosophy meets practicality.

Our Quick Entry tool is designed for one thing: making conscious spending sustainable. Category. Amount. Submit. Ten seconds, maximum.

It's not a journal. It's not a complicated ritual. It's a micro-moment of awareness that fits into real life.

Buy your morning coffee? Ten seconds to log it. Grab groceries? Ten seconds. Fill up your tank? Ten seconds.

Over time, these moments compound. You start anticipating the entry before the purchase. The awareness moves earlier in the process. Eventually, you're making conscious choices before you spend—not just recording them after.

That's the transformation. Not the data. The practice.

Yes. And here's why that's not a contradiction.

Paid plans include CSV import for one specific purpose: catching what you missed. Life happens. You forget to log something. You need to reconcile your records with reality.

But notice what happens when you import a CSV. You still have to categorize each transaction. You still touch each line item. You still create that moment of awareness—just after the fact instead of in the moment.

We could auto-categorize everything. The AI is capable. But that would defeat the purpose.

The categorization is the practice. Even when you're catching up, you're still doing the work that creates change.

This is intentional.

First, the practical: Bank connections break. APIs change. You wake up one morning and your “connected” account hasn't synced in three weeks. The promise of automation becomes a source of anxiety.

But more importantly: we don't want your banking credentials. We don't want access to your full transaction history. We don't want the responsibility of protecting that data.

Solvent knows only what you tell it. Your categories. Your amounts. Your goals. Nothing more.

This isn't a limitation we're apologizing for. It's a feature we're proud of. Your financial data stays where it belongs—with your bank. What you share with Solvent is your conscious record of your own choices.

That's all we need to help you change.

Let's be honest.

If you want fully automated finance tracking that requires zero effort, Solvent isn't your app. If you're looking for AI to categorize everything so you never have to think about it, look elsewhere. If the idea of manually entering transactions feels like punishment, this isn't the right fit.

But if you've tried the automation approach and found yourself no better off? If you have “complete” financial data but still feel out of control? If you suspect that the problem isn't lack of information but lack of awareness?

Then you might be ready for something different.

Solvent is for people who understand that change requires participation. That friction can be productive. That the inconvenience of awareness is the price of transformation.

It's for people who are ready to show up for their own financial life.