Build your first budget

Do this after a sync, not before. The point of building a budget here is that it starts from evidence — your own last few months — rather than from a blank grid you fill in from memory. A budget is not a cage. It is a steward deciding on purpose where the money in their care should go, before the month decides for them.

Three views, one month

• Budget — the month as a whole: what is planned, what is spent, what is left.
• Income — what you expect to come in, and what has actually arrived.
• Spending — the category-by-category grid, and where amounts are suggested from your own history.

These are three windows onto one set of figures, not three copies. They cannot disagree, because there is only one of them.

Start on Spending

It proposes a number for each category from what you have actually been spending. Correcting a suggestion is much faster than inventing one, and it is far more likely to survive contact with the month.

Money for things that are not monthly

Car insurance, a holiday, the vet. Put those on Goals and set aside a bit each month, so the bill is boring when it lands rather than a crisis.

Check a number you do not believe

Click any category name to see the transactions behind it. No number here asks for blind trust — see Checking a number you do not believe.

Your first budget will be imperfect, and that is fine. It is one month, honestly attended to — and that is where stewardship starts. “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” (Luke 16:10, WEB). Set the plan, let it meet the month, and adjust.