About Turbobulls

Two problems that fight each other

We started in 2023 with an ordinary complaint. Money in several places, two brokers and a bank and more than one currency, and no single view of any of it. The spreadsheet that stood in for one was wrong more often than it was right, and always in the same direction: it flattered.

The tools that offered the single view had a second problem attached. To show you the picture, each one had to hold the picture. Everything you own, what you earn, what you spend, sitting readable on somebody else's server, usually behind a promise not to look rather than an inability to.

The two pull against each other, and that is the part that took the time. The more complete the view, the worse the thing you have handed over. Combining investments with spending is exactly what makes a picture worth reading, and exactly what makes it worth stealing. Most products resolve that by picking a side: track investments, or track spending, or track everything and read everything.

We wanted the combined view without the trade. That meant scrambling everything on your device before it is sent, so we cannot read your portfolio even though we are the ones storing it. The decision was the smaller part of it. Living with it is what took the two years.

What building it that way cost

Encryption has to come first, not later. You cannot add it to a product that already reads its own data, because every feature built before it assumes the server can see what it is working with. So it went in before there was a product to put it in, and every feature since has had to be designed around a server that is blind to your holdings.

The first thing that rules out is the convenience everyone expects: a login to your broker that pulls your positions in. Holding those credentials means holding your data in a form we could read. So imports are files you export yourself, and no two brokers, in any two countries, export the same file. The same trade comes out of three platforms written three different ways, so each one has to be taught separately before it reads correctly. For the ones not taught yet, you can bring the file in anyway and say which column means what, so a broker we have not met is still a broker that works.

The second thing it complicates is prices. A tracker is nothing without them, and the ordinary way to get them is to look at what somebody owns and go and fetch exactly that. We cannot look. So the prices, dividends and splits we keep are for investments in general rather than for anyone's holdings in particular, and your figures are worked out from those. Currencies work the same way: a trade is converted at the rate on the day it happened rather than today's, so last year's returns do not quietly change every time the euro moves.

Then the other half. Spending next to investing, cash accounts, income, and a net worth figure that spans both, all encrypted the same way, so the combined view we started for is also the one we cannot read. That half could not go in until the first half held, because it lives under every rule above and adds the budgeting on top.

By June 2025 the foundation held, and the first release had the encryption already in it rather than on a roadmap. Everything after that is public, and the timeline below is drawn from it.

How it got here

From the first release onward, every line is an entry in the changelog, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

1. 2023 to 2025

   Two years on the foundation before anything shipped. Encryption first, because it cannot be retrofitted, and then everything that decision drags with it: imports as files, prices for holdings the server cannot see, and the spending side built to the same rule. The section above is what those years were.

2. June 2025

   The first release. Transactions, portfolios, dividends, multiple currencies, and end-to-end encryption in version 1.0.0 rather than bolted on later, which is the decision everything since has had to work around.

3. Autumn 2025

   The investing side filled out: return metrics that agree with each other, benchmark comparison, a full mobile experience, and an overview that puts the numbers in one place.

4. May 2026

   One-click imports from brokers and banks. Encryption rules out logging in on your behalf, so the work went into reading the files they already give you.

5. July 2026

   Envelope budgeting. The spending side stopped being a place to log expenses and became the other half of the picture, next to the portfolio rather than beneath it.

6. August 2026

   A free plan that keeps working with no card and no expiry, and paid plans split by side, so paying for spending does not mean buying investing tools you will not open.

The part that has not changed

Your transactions are encrypted on your device, with a key only you hold, before they reach us. What arrives on our side is scrambled and stays that way. We cannot read your portfolio, and that is a property of how the product is built rather than a promise about how we behave.

It costs something, and it is fairer to say so here than to let you find out later. There is no bank or broker connection that logs in on your behalf, because holding those credentials would mean holding your data in a form we could read. Imports are files you export yourself. In exchange, a breach of ours does not expose what you own. How the encryption works.