I’m Jeff.
Thinking Budget is a mission (some would call it an obsession) that I have started, stopped, restarted, tried to avoid, rinsed and repeated until I couldn’t stay away.
My almost-new car was due for an oil change, but the dealership had no openings until well after we had to leave for a planned road trip. Against my better judgment, I went to a quick-lube shop for the oil change. About 1,000 miles into the trip, our transmission blew. The mechanics on that end found the transmission fluid plug sitting on the inside of the skid plate. The financial carnage quickly mushroomed: last-minute rental car for the rest of the trip; three last-minute airline tickets for the return home; $2,000 for the transmission rebuild; another ticket to fly back there once the car was ready.
This started early in the month, continuing with multiple $1,000+ body blows: about $5,000 all in. My budget app then did what budget apps do. It turned four categories red and put a negative number at the top of every screen. Nothing in the app told me what to do with the rest of the month, or the month after that. So I did what most of us do. I stopped opening it, and I didn’t try another one for two years.
Setup was its own problem. I have tried every budgeting tool out there, and many required spending time (some an insane amount of slogging) to make the tool work. I won’t spend that time. Whether I want to or not, it is just not realistic.
All the budgeting apps could tell me I’d blown it. They couldn’t tell me what to do next.
Setup I could work around. What I couldn’t work around was being left alone with a red number and no next move. So I built the app I wanted. When a month goes sideways, Thinking Budget shows you where it’s headed, suggests a course correction (a specific move from where you can spare it), and tells you what the rest of the month looks like.
Thinking Budget is built for the month you already blew, so the month still lands where you meant it to.
I get that several budgeting apps have huge followings, and I celebrate that they work for those people. But I also know that many people have, like me, tried them and walked away dejected. If you have tried other budgeting apps and felt like a failure, this is for you.
Thinking Budget is budgeting for the rest of us.
Blew a month? Tell me about it: hello@thinkingbudget.com.
Want to watch a course correction happen? Here’s a sample month. No account, no card, no setup.