Look at your bank statement for March and you'll see a list of transactions. Debits, credits, reference numbers, dates. It's accurate, but it doesn't mean anything. It's data, not understanding.
Now think about what actually happened in March. You booked the summer holiday. Your daughter started swimming lessons. You finally replaced that broken kitchen tap. You had friends over for dinner twice. Your car needed an unexpected service.
Same month. Same money. But one version is a spreadsheet and the other is your life.
The gap between data and meaning
Finance tools are very good at data. They can tell you that you spent £412 on "Food & Drink" in March, that this was 8% more than February, and that you're 12% over your monthly average.
What they can't tell you is that the increase was because you had people round for your birthday — which is a completely different thing from gradually spending more on takeaways. One is a life event. The other is a pattern worth noticing. The numbers look the same. The stories are completely different.
Context is what turns data into understanding. And context is what most financial tools are missing.
Your year as a narrative
If you could look back at your year and see it as a story rather than a series of charts, it might read something like this:
January was quiet — post-Christmas recovery. In February you started saving for the summer holiday, putting aside £250 a month. March brought the car's annual service and an unexpected brake repair. April and May were steady. June was the holiday itself — a big spend, but one you'd planned for. July's childcare costs jumped because of school holidays. August had four family birthdays. September hit hard with both insurance renewals. By October things settled back down, and you ended the year in a stronger position than you started.
That's a story you'd recognise. It's your life, reflected clearly. And it's far more useful than twelve monthly bar charts.
What this means for Keep
Keep aims to reflect your financial life in terms you'd actually use. Not "Category: Transport, £15,000" but "In January, you bought a car after many months of patient savings." Not "Discretionary spending up 40% in August" but "August was expensive — four birthdays and the family holiday."
This isn't about making things vague or avoiding numbers. The numbers are always there. But they're presented with context, with narrative, with an understanding that your financial data represents real life events — not abstract categories.
Celebrating progress
Stories aren't just about explaining spending. They're about recognising the things that matter. You cleared that credit card. You hit your savings goal a month early. You got through the expensive summer season without dipping into your emergency fund. Your household's net worth crossed a milestone.
These moments deserve to be noticed. Not with a patronising notification, but with a quiet acknowledgement: you're making progress. Things are moving in the right direction.
The human layer
At its heart, this is about recognising that money isn't really about money. It's about the life it enables — the holidays you take, the home you make, the security you build, the experiences you share with the people you love.
A finance tool that only shows you numbers is missing the point. Keep aims to show you the story those numbers tell.