The budgeting app for people who actually hate budgeting apps.
Maybe you've tried budgeting apps before and never stuck with them. Maybe the idea of budgeting feels overwhelming and you don't know where to start. Either way — you're in the right place.
Simple Budgets is the easiest way to get started. No perfect system required. No financial expertise needed. Just a simple habit, built one transaction at a time.
Built around two ideas.
Most budgeting apps fail because they demand perfection. Miss a week, overspend a category, and suddenly the whole thing falls apart. Simple Budgets works differently.
There are levels to budgeting. You don't need a perfect system to begin — you just need to begin. Start simply, and build from there at your own pace. No wrong place to start.
Every time you spend, you log it. That small habit — done consistently — builds the kind of awareness that actually changes how you feel about money.
We could auto-import your transactions. We chose not to.
A lot of apps connect to your bank and categorize everything automatically. And it sounds great — until you open the app three weeks later, scroll through the damage, feel terrible, and close it again.
Passive tracking creates passive awareness. When your app just tells you what you spent, it's easy to feel like a spectator of your own finances.
When you log a transaction yourself — even for five seconds — something different happens. You feel it. You connect the moment of spending to your budget. That tiny ritual, repeated over time, is what actually changes your relationship with money.
You choose your categories. You decide how many you want. You set targets when you're ready. Simple Budgets gives you the structure and gets out of the way.
Pick your level. Start today.
No wrong answer here. Start wherever feels right — you can always level up later.
Set up a few basic categories and log what you spend. No targets, no pressure. This is the single most powerful change you can make — simply seeing your spending builds awareness that nothing else can. Spend a month here. You'll be surprised what it does.
Once you know what you spend, start shaping it. Set monthly targets for each category and take real control of your variable spending. This is where most people live — and it works.
Set up recurring bills, income rules, and savings funds. See your total financial picture in one place — income versus spending, subscriptions, everything. Get here when you're ready, or start here if you already have a system and want to bring it all together.
The one decision that changed my relationship with money.
Four years ago, I had real financial anxiety. My wife and I had a rough idea of a budget, but I never really knew where our money was going. I was constantly worried — were we overspending? Would we have enough to cover the credit card bill? It was a weight I carried every month.
Then I made one change. I started tracking my expenses with a simple app — just categories, just logging what we spent. That was it. No targets, no complicated system. That single habit changed everything.
Over the years, I built it out. Spreadsheets. Rollover tracking. Recurring bills. The whole thing. Eventually I graduated to YNAB, which I took seriously and tried hard to make work. But after my first full month, I opened the app to find over 200 transactions waiting in a review queue. I remember thinking: I would genuinely rather build a budgeting app from scratch than do this every month.
So I did.
I built Simple Budgets to work the way I wish something had worked when I was starting out — and the way I needed it to work after years of doing this. Start simple. Track first. Build from there. No perfection required.
Request access.
Simple Budgets is in closed beta. We're letting people in gradually to keep things personal and make sure the experience is great. Drop your info below and we'll be in touch.
Your finances don't have to feel like this.
Less anxiety. More clarity. Five seconds at a time.
Request beta access ↑