Our Story

Hi, I’m Sam Thomsen, the creator of Principal Plan. We’re based in North Carolina, and Principal Plan has been part of my life, on and off, for nearly thirty years. Here’s a little about how it started and where we’re taking it.

Where it began

We first released Principal Plan in 1997. I liked the straightforward idea behind envelope budgeting: give every dollar a job as soon as it arrives, before you spend it. The envelope system is simple, and I wanted the software to reflect that. My aim was a reliable, easy-to-use tool without a lot of bells and whistles. That’s still what we want to build today.

A labor of love

Over the years, running our business, raising our kids and pursuing other interests kept me busy. Principal Plan remained a personal project I returned to when I could. Though Principal Plan has been continuously available online since we released it, we never did much to market it. Even so, people found it, used it and stayed with it. Some of our users have been with us since those early days, and that means a lot to me. Their feedback has helped us improve the software, release after release.

The care I put into it

My professional background is in high-performance computing and analytics. Accuracy and responsiveness matter in that work, and I’ve always brought the same care to Principal Plan. It may be a smaller, more personal project, but I take its quality just as seriously. We want it to be something you can rely on, without making your day more complicated.

Making more time for Principal Plan

In 2025, I decided it was time to give Principal Plan the attention I’d wanted to give it for years. We started building the mobile companion apps, spending more time on the desktop software and introducing it to more people. Releasing Principal Plan Mobile in 2026 was an important step for us. After years of quietly working on the project, I’m glad to be sharing it with a wider audience and hearing from people who are discovering it for the first time.

What comes next

There’s still plenty we’d like to build. We’re interested in closer connections with online banking services and the possibilities of AI assistants, but I don’t want to lose the simplicity that drew me to envelope budgeting in the first place. We also know that financial information is personal. As we explore new ideas, we intend to keep those connections optional and be clear about what they involve. We want to keep improving Principal Plan without losing sight of why I started.

We’d love to hear from you, whether you’ve been with us for years or have only just found Principal Plan. Try it free for 60 days, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. Your experiences and suggestions help us decide what comes next.