The Split Zero-based budget
Step 3, give your pay its jobs. The bills, the things you love now, and the saving and investing your plan needs, down to zero, with paydays, a diagram of your pay, and tracking with insights.
What it does
Enter your take-home pay and how often you're paid, plus any other after-tax income. Then split it into expenses, savings and investments until nothing is left unassigned. The ledger lists every dollar's job, and in Full a bar shows them all at a glance.
Weekly, fortnightly or monthly
Show the whole budget as weekly, fortnightly, monthly or annual amounts, whichever matches how you're paid and how you think about your bills. Switching only changes how figures are shown, not what you entered.
Budgeting with someone
Sharing costs with a partner or housemate? Enter each person's pay separately. Every item can belong to one person or be shared, and you can see how much of each person's pay is spoken for, with shared costs split in proportion to what each of you earns.
See where it flows
A flow diagram draws your pay splitting into each expense, saving and investment. The saving and investing rate it shows is the number that most affects how soon your plan comes together, so it's worth copying into The Plan.
Then track what happened
A budget is the plan. Switch to Track and check in for any dates you like, a month, a pay cycle or a week away, and enter what actually went to each line. It shows where you came in over or under, line by line, and how each check-in compares over time. Lines you leave blank count as on budget.
Why zero-based budgeting
A zero-based budget gives every dollar of your pay a job before the month starts, so nothing drifts into 'where did that go?'. It isn't about spending less on everything. It's about deciding on purpose, so the things you care about get funded first and the rest fits around them.
Your budget, in files you keep
Your budget and your check-ins stay in your browser on your device, not in a cloud account. Export them as a CSV to keep a copy or move to another device, and import it again whenever you like.