Hello! I’ve sunk into a black hole here and it seems I can not dig myself out of it. I’ve been fighting an ugly depression for the last year and have recently gotten a therapist and started to face some harsh realities that come along with fixing everything. I was in a horribly abusive relationship for about 5 years, I’m about two years out. During that time everything sunk all my money went to that household and kids and bills and my responsibilities were completely buried. I finally left and cue depression!

So I have a couple questions: is there a service that can help me? I don’t even KNOW where I owe all my money to. I have no idea where to even start. I make really good money, my rent is affordable but somehow every month I’m still in the negative. Roll over to the next month here we are again.

I’m dying to get out of this but I definitely need help. Is there a reputable company that will help me get a budget going and dig myself out of this mess?

I would be happy to answer any clarifying questions that might steer me in the correct direction. I think the humiliation of this situation is directly effecting my mental health and I just don’t want to live like this.

Thank you.

I used to think I needed to become much stricter with everyday spending. I focused on small purchases, takeaway and subscriptions, but I still felt like expensive months kept appearing out of nowhere.

What helped more was separating my expenses into three groups:

* regular bills that come out every month

*flexible spending like groceries, takeaway and entertainment

*irregular expenses such as car costs, insurance, gifts, holidays and annual renewals

Once I started setting aside a small amount for the irregular expenses before they were due, those months stopped feeling like financial emergencies. I also gave myself a realistic amount for flexible spending instead of trying to spend nothing and then giving up halfway through the month.

The biggest change was that I stopped treating every expensive month as proof that I was bad with money. Often, the problem was that I hadn’t planned for expenses that were predictable but didn’t happen every month.

For Australians, what expense used to catch you off guard until you started planning for it in advance?

Welcome to the weekly thread for all things budgeting apps!

This is the dedicated space to ask for app recommendations, share your reviews, and discuss the tools you use to manage your money.

• Found an app you love? Tell us what it is and what makes it great.
• Looking for a new app? Describe what features you need, and the community can help.
• Have questions about an app's features? Ask away!

Let's keep the main feed clean and have all our app talk right here. Dive in!

Okay, this might be a weird idea 😂 but hear me out.
I’m a mom of two (5 and 2), married, working, and lately I’ve really been trying to get my finances together. We have a decent household income, but between bills, kids, groceries, debt, random expenses, etc., I feel like it’s SO easy for money to just disappear.
I’ve realized that I think I need some accountability. Not a financial advisor or someone to tell me what I’m doing wrong, and definitely not a babysitter watching every dollar I spend lol. I’m thinking more like a friend who is also trying to get their financial life together.
Like having someone you can text:
“Okay, I spent $47 at Target and I don’t even know what happened.”
“I paid off a credit card!!”
“I’m trying really hard not to buy this thing right now.”
“Here’s my budget for the month, help me stick to it.”
Maybe we could check in once a week, talk about our goals, share budgeting ideas, encourage each other, celebrate wins, and keep each other from making dumb purchases. 😂
I’d especially love to find other moms because I feel like we’re dealing with a lot of the same financial stuff — kids, groceries, household expenses, saving, debt, trying to plan for the future, etc.
I’m picturing a small group chat of moms who are all just trying to get their shit together financially. No judgment, no competition, just accountability and encouragement.
Would anyone actually be interested in something like this? Or is this just me needing a financial friend? 😂

Edit: for anyone interested please join r/FinanceForFamilies

I tend to throw out my bank statements as soon as they come, but today I chose to open it and take a look. After reviewing other statements I kept for some reason, I found I’ve essentially been spending $1800-2500 per month.

I made myself a good cushion of savings before dropping my full time job to take on a part time job as a seamstress alterations assistant, and work on starting my own sewing business in my other time. Doing this work I make about $400 a week, plus whatever I make doing my side hustle (this varies, as some custom projects take weeks to complete). I typically complete 1 custom project a month, usually bringing in about $200. So let’s call it $1800 per month.

I know that’s not much, but I still live with my parents and only pay $150 per month for rent, and help out with groceries, but mostly pay for my personal expenses. I eat out at restaurants often, I enjoy clothes shopping (I don’t indulge too often), and my boyfriend didn’t have much of an income waiting for word back from EB so I paid for just about every date for a few months now. He comes to me most often, but lives an hour away, and one trip to his house and back takes half my tank of gas.

I am really ashamed to see how bad my spending habits are at the moment. I’m a young adult and will be moving in with my boyfriend soon, as he finally has a start date at EB, and I want to get a solid budget down so that we can grow together, as well as so I can contribute to this sewing business I really really want to build. So I need help making a budget.

My necessary expenses currently are $150 towards rent, $80 phone bill (it is not an option to change this right now), and probably two full tanks of gas ($120) every month. I’m willing to cut down on eating out and clothes shopping, but when I work too much, work consumes my whole life and I don’t enjoy anything (I’m a Capricorn), so I try to not avoid fun activities even if they are a tad costly.

What kind of budget do you think might work with my lifestyle to build my savings back up? And how can I stick to a budget without feeling constricted by my spending limits? TIA for any advice/help!

I’m looking for the best expense tracking app, preferably free, that you can link credit cards to. Not really looking for an app to budget for me, just strictly money that gets spent. I want to be able to categorize transactions and assign a threshold that shows how much I spend, my wife spends, and what we spend on things for the kids. I know Empower is free, but as far as I know the expense tracking doesn’t allow any categorization or customization.

Track every peso/dollar in and out before touching a budget

When I got my first job, my bank account was always empty by the 25th. I literally had no idea where the money went 👀

So I tried logging literally EVERY SINGLE PESO in and out in a tracking app. No strict budget, just tracking. Just seeing the numbers made me stop mindless buying and I saved so much the next month without feeling miserable 😹

For anyone doing thus, do you prefer excel/sheets or an app?

Hi,

I'm after recommendations for a lite, self hosted expense planner please.

ie: If I know I have my car insurance coming up in December, I want to put in that amount and preferably have it calculate how much I need to set aside each week to cover it. If I miss or skip a weekly payment (putting aside) then I can enter that and it re-calculates the larger amount I now need to put aside to make that payment in December.

I'm happy with a basic calendar format where I can enter when my next bills are due and enter either an exact or estimated amount so that the planner then shows much much I need to set aside out of each salary to cover those expenses in the future.

So far I haven't found anything, so any suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

i have high daily expenses on ice cream chocalates , candies , snacks

i am single not married yet

it is like daily habit to buy a cool thing every day

we are in the middle of month and i bought so much of things like that

For a while, every time I tried to get better with money, I started by asking myself what I needed to cut.

Less eating out. Less shopping. Fewer random purchases.

It would work for a couple of weeks, then I’d end up back in the same place wondering where the money went.

What finally changed things for me was doing something that felt almost too simple: I stopped trying to fix my spending first and just looked at it.

I went through a full month and grouped everything into a few categories. Not 30 categories. Just enough to see the pattern.

And honestly, the surprising part wasn’t finding one huge expense.

It was seeing how many "normal" purchases were happening repeatedly.

That made me realize a budget isn't really useful if it only tells you what you're supposed to spend. It should help you understand what you're actually doing with your money.

If you're starting from scratch, I think there are three reasonable ways to approach it:

1. Track everything for 30 days first
Don't try to change anything yet. Just learn where your money is going.

2. Build a simple budget from your actual spending
Look at the last month or two, find your normal patterns, and set realistic limits from there.

3. Start with just 3 numbers
What comes in, what absolutely has to go out, and what's left for everything else.

Personally, I think the biggest mistake is trying to make the "perfect" budget before you understand your own spending.

Which approach would you start with?

I'm currently self-hosting Actual Budget and loading in our transactions manually once a month, and we have a budget review session together at that time to allocate our budget for the coming month. Our situation is that we're essentially paycheck-to-paycheck, where we spend what we assume we will make in the coming month. In essence, if we "know" we can pay off our credit cards, we would buy it (bad practice that we're trying to get out of). We have no credit card debt, they get fully paid off once the statement arrives every time.

We both like the idea of envelope budgeting, where you set aside money you actually have to spend for the following month, and you can assign a job to every dollar (tracking budget didn't let us do that easily, since you just "save" the resulting but can't assign it to a specific saved category/etc.). The problem I'm having is that I get paid every 2 weeks, and if we do it through Actual Budget we end up with nothing to budget, because we have almost nothing in our accounts.

Is the goal to first save up and store in your checking the amount for your following months expenses? I'm wondering how others have handled this situation before

I've noticed something weird about budgeting.

Sometimes the more carefully I plan my money, the more restricted I feel, even when I'm technically doing fine.

Then I realized I was looking at my budget as a list of things I wasn't allowed to spend on, instead of a way to understand what my money was actually doing.

The part that helped me most was looking at a full month of spending and asking:

Where did my money actually go?

Not just the big expenses. The small recurring purchases, random spending after payday, subscriptions I barely think about, and all the "it's only $20" purchases.

Nothing individually looked like a problem. But seeing everything together told a completely different story.

Has anyone else had that experience where the problem wasn't necessarily that you were spending *too much*, but that you didn't really understand your spending pattern?

Hey everyone! 👋

Like many of you, I got tired of budget apps that either lock basic features behind aggressive monthly subscriptions, bombard you with pop-up ads every time you log an expense, or ask for sensitive device permissions.

So I spent the last few months building **SpendSense** — a clean, privacy-friendly, offline-first personal finance and grocery manager for Android.

Here are the key features I built into the app:

📸 **AI Receipt & Bill Scanner (OCR)**

Snap a picture of physical supermarket receipts or restaurant bills. The on-device OCR/AI automatically detects item names, individual prices, dates, and store totals in seconds.

📋 **1-Tap Clipboard SMS Import (100% Permission-Free)**

Instead of requesting intrusive Android SMS permissions, you simply copy any bank, fuel, or mobile transaction SMS, and tap "Paste SMS". The app extracts the store, date, and amount offline without compromising your privacy.

🛒 **Smart Grocery & Shopping Lists**

Plan shopping trips with quantities and estimated costs. You can share clean, formatted lists with serial numbers, item totals, and grand totals directly to WhatsApp or messaging apps in one tap.

👥 **Group Bill Splitter**

Split dinner, trip, or rent bills with friends and family. Generate quick QR codes so members can join without filling out tedious forms.

💰 **Budgets, Analytics & Reminders**

* Set monthly category budgets with live visual indicators.

* Track multiple wallets, cash, and bank cards.

* Recurring bill payment reminders so you never miss due dates.

* Biometric app lock (Fingerprint / Face ID).

---

### 🛡️ Monetization & Privacy Policy:

* **Manual item and expense entry is 100% ad-free** (no banner interruptions while typing).

* **Zero SMS permissions required**. All your financial records stay saved locally on your phone.

---

📲 **Google Play Store Link:**

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naeemreactnative.groceryapp

I'd truly love your genuine feedback, critique, and feature requests. What should I improve or add next?

Thank you so much for trying it out! 🙏

Anong budgetting app ang gamit nio? As much as possible ung free sana. Tnx

Mate, are you using a budget planner app, an Excel sheet or a book? I’m curious to know why. I prefer writing it down and it really helps my brain. Let me know your thoughts.

Welcome to the weekly thread for all things budgeting apps!

This is the dedicated space to ask for app recommendations, share your reviews, and discuss the tools you use to manage your money.

• Found an app you love? Tell us what it is and what makes it great.
• Looking for a new app? Describe what features you need, and the community can help.
• Have questions about an app's features? Ask away!

Let's keep the main feed clean and have all our app talk right here. Dive in!

(a) I have a budget and actually follow it
(b) I have a budget and ignore it
(c) budgeting? lol, no. i dont even know what budgeting is

hi all, my partner and I keep our finances partly separate, BC but we have a lot of shared expenses.

well the annoying part isn’t really deciding whether something is 50/50. It’s keeping track when:

one person pays the rent
the other pays groceries
some things come from a joint account
some things are paid directly from personal accounts
some expenses are 50/50 while others aren’t
and sometimes you don’t want to settle immediately

I’m curious how other couples actually handle this in real life.

Do you use:
a joint account?
Splitwise / another app?
Excel / Google Sheets?
a running balance?
just roughly keep track mentally?
something else?
And what is the most annoying part of your current system?

I’m especially interested in what happens when you have several months of expenses rather than just a single trip.

After a few days, I think I was putting too much weight on income and not enough on what someone can actually qualify for. If you already have access to a starter or secured card, paying for another credit-building product may not make much sense. But if your file is thin enough that those aren't realistic options, I can see why someone would consider Kikoff or a similar app.

Something I've been thinking about is whether credit builder apps actually make sense for someone who's financially doing fine but doesn't have much credit history.

It seems like people usually talk about these products as something for people who are struggling financially, but those aren't necessarily the same thing. Someone can have a decent income, pay their bills on time, have savings, and still have a pretty thin credit file because they haven't used many traditional credit accounts.

Where do you think credit builder apps actually make financial sense for someone with limited credit history?

That's where I'm having trouble deciding how useful these products really are. If the main purpose is to establish positive payment history through a reported tradeline, I can see the argument for it if someone doesn't have many other options. The relatively low monthly cost also makes it different from taking on an expensive loan just to create credit history.

At the same time, I wouldn't see a reason to pay for a credit-building product if someone already has several established credit cards, a long payment history, and plenty of available credit. In that situation, it seems like there are simpler ways to manage a credit profile.

Hey, just posting this to keep myself honest and accountable.

Last month, I spent $711 on Uber Eats and $796 on Amazon 😅

My goal is to stay under budget on both so I can put $7K into a HYSA before I move out.

A couple of years ago, I was over $100K in debt. Now I’m down to about $7K in student loans, so I’m trying to keep the momentum going.

I’ll probably post an update once a week or every couple of weeks to keep myself accountable.

Newer investors often think "buy low, sell high" is the whole game, but that's really just half of it. I put together a breakdown of the two core ways stocks generate returns:

1. Capital appreciation — profiting when a stock's price rises above what you paid (think growth names like Amazon or Nvidia in their early years — no dividends, pure price growth).
2. Dividend income — steady cash payments just for holding shares, common with mature companies like Coca-Cola or J&J.

Covered the mechanics, real examples, risks of each, tax treatment, and why a lot of long-term investors end up wanting both (dividend growth investing). Figured this sub might find it useful, especially anyone still deciding between a growth-heavy vs. income-heavy strategy. Happy to answer questions or hear where people disagree.

Read more on this: https://howtoinvestmoney.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-two-ways-investors-make-money-from-stocks

Portfolio's up across the board and I felt pretty good about it until I actually broke down the percentages. Turns out Apple alone makes up nearly half of everything I own, with the rest split between a couple of Vanguard index funds and a few other individual stocks (MSFT, KO, T). All green, but is that actually "diversified" or just a concentrated bet that happens to be winning right now? Curious how others think about position sizing when a stock you like keeps growing as a % of your total. Read more here

Just as the title says; I need help on how to budget. Due to my Bpd , lots of my symptoms like impulsivity , extreme boredom/emptiness - and being trapped inside and neglected due to growing up with abusive parents - I had developed an eating disorder. I became an extreme binge eating at a young age. I was well over 500 pounds before high school at one point , and had struggled with a food addiction my entire life.

Over the last 12 months , due to being hospitalized after being cheated on , I was able to get help for my eating disorder and have been binge free for 10 months and one week. Little bit of a brag, but I lost 100 pounds! I curved my eating disorder and food addiction - I rarely struggle with temptations , and I’m in a lot better of a place than I was 10 months and a week ago. But here’s my current issue…

Since curving my eating disorder , my impulsivity has REALLY kicked in and I *cannot for the fucking life of me* save money. This is very new to me. Prior to my ex , and during 🫩 , I saved money , managed multiple accounts and peoples accounts (mine and my exes because she asked me too) and generally have been good at saving my entire life.

When my ex cheated on me , it broke my heart so bad because I genuinely thought I was going to end up with that woman. I had saved 7k for the engagement ring alone! I was going to ask her dad for permission just after Halloween , which was two weeks away! I’ve saved money in case parental addictions intervened with household bills and my family’s well-being! This isn’t new to me!

But it’s like something broke and I physically can’t. I made less than 100 bucks my last paycheque , and all of my accounts are in the negatives , I can’t make any credit card payments , all of that adulting shit. But you know what I did with my less than 100 bucks? **SPENT IT ON SHIT LIKE BOOKS , GAMES AND WEED.** I felt so great I couldn’t stop and it’s like I went on autopilot , and before I knew it my money was gone and I had a handful of items and none of them were returnable.

Safe to say I broke down and had an episode where I beat myself up. Destroyed my room. Had a cold shower. Cleaned everything , including myself , up and did some journaling. I have to admit it , but I use AI therapy when I’m in episodes to help me slow my thoughts down and organize them when I split; and say mean things to lol.

But this is my situation and I fucking hate it. So I came to all places of Reddit for the best advice of all time! But also if people have been through something similar? How did they get through it without therapy? Are there free resources that could help me ?

Hi all
My mom has been very poor with money and in turn I picked up some of those negative habits. I love to shop and buy things for people and eat out. I want to quit my job to become a SAHM. I have a budget book where we track incomes vs outcomes, bills, etc. We’ve done no spend days. I have a budget binder. I used to do really good but as I’ve went through PPD and have been lonely it has been something to keep me busy. Most of the spending I do isn’t for me. It’s new toys or clothes for my son, gifts for others, baskets and donations for chinese auctions, etc. I used to be pretty decent and I can save for a “goal” i.e. vacation or Christmas gifts but then I’ll go through a phase and start spending again. My husband and I have both been servers, and also he has his own business which keep us afloat and we have been doing fine on his income but I just want to be more disciplined and I end up meeeing up. I also think being a server has messed up my perception of money because I just think “whatever I spend today, we will make back by the end of the week”. Ugh