I'm a Developer and I Run My Business on Spreadsheets - Here's Why

I've built web apps, APIs, and dashboards. I know how to spin up a database, write a backend, and deploy to production. And yet, my entire business operations run on Excel. Not because I can't build something better. Because there's nothing to build. The "I'll just build it" trap Every developer has done this. You need to track client invoices. Instead of opening Excel, you think: "I could build a quick app for this. React frontend, Postgres database, deploy on Vercel. Maybe add Stripe integration later." Three weekends later, you have a barely functional invoice tracker that does less than what a spreadsheet does out of the box. And now you have to maintain it. I've fallen into this trap at least four times. The expense tracker I spent 20 hours building? Abandoned after six weeks. The project dashboard I coded from scratch? Broke when I changed the data format. The client portal I was "definitely going to finish"? Still sitting in a private repo. The total cost of building internal to