The raise, the apps, the spreadsheet. Still not a dollar ahead.
None of it was wrong. All of it was late.
Start, free for 60 days How it works
No card. Nothing to connect.
The chart arrives after the money is gone
A statement, a category breakdown, a year in review. Each one lands weeks late, when nothing is left to decide.
A kakeibo (家計簿), or household ledger, puts the writing back at the moment you pay. You write it down while standing there and tap one word for why. Four seconds.
Hani Motoko was Japan's first woman journalist. She published the first kakeibo in a newspaper in 1904, for households with no statements and no charts to wait for. It predates every app that has failed you, and it runs on the one thing they all removed: you have to notice.
The apps were also wrong about your good months
Say you moved $500 into retirement last month. Your budgeting app files it as spending, because it left your checking account.
So the month reads as a loss.
You did not lose $500. You still have it. It went from one pocket of yours to another, and your own app called that a loss.
Money that is gone is Burn. Money that only moved is not. What came in, minus what actually went, is the change in what you are worth. This book checks that every month.
What it asks of you
Four seconds, a few times a day. The amount, one word, one tap for why.
- Needrent, food
- Wantdining, treats
- Growbooks, courses, culture
- Unexpectedrepairs, illness
- Givecharity, gifts
Your pay goes in once, on payday. The book remembers a bill that comes round, so the amount is already there next time. What you type is the day to day: the coffee, the groceries, the thing you did not plan on.
The four seconds never go away. That is the trade, and it is why this works where the chart did not.
There is no total on the screen where you write. The moment you can see what is left, you stop writing down what you bought and start deciding what to call it. Dinner becomes Need. Everybody does it. It is not a character flaw.
The week you miss
You will miss a week. Most people do, early on.
Nothing here scolds you for it. No streak to break, nothing red, and no catching up to do. A day with nothing written might be a day you spent nothing, and this book will not guess which.
Come back on Sunday and the week is where you left it.
By the third month something has changed, and it is not a number. You know roughly where you stand without going to look. Room to breathe.
What we will not do
- We never connect to your bank. Not "we do not have to." We do not. There is nowhere here to put a bank password.
- We never sell or share your data. No advertising, no brokers, no partner who gets a copy.
- We never tell you what to buy, own, or hold. You get your own numbers back. The verdict is yours.
Keep the book with a partner and you decide what goes in it and what stays yours alone. Shared entries carry no name. The book cannot tell either of you who bought the groceries.
We are a ledger. We never hold, move, or touch your money.
What it costs
$96 a year
Or $9 a month. One tier, so nothing better is kept from you. Sixty days free, no card. Holding one month against the next is the first thing here a spreadsheet cannot do, and there is nothing to hold until the second month.
$96 CAD in Canada, at parity rather than converted. What you pay when you join is what you keep paying.