Most people run their household money in a spreadsheet, in their head, or not at all. This course covers the first two properly and replaces them.
Do Foundations first if you haven't. This one assumes you know what an entry and a Space are.
Lesson 1: split the money before you track it
If you have any income that isn't a salary, it needs its own Space. Freelance work, a rental, selling things, a side business.
The reason isn't tidiness. It's that mixing them makes both numbers useless: you can't tell whether the business is working, and you can't tell what the household actually spends.
Create a second Space and name it after the thing it holds. Move nothing yet. Just have somewhere for it to go.
Lesson 2: get the bills in
A bill you remember is a bill that eventually surprises you.
Put in every repeating payment you can think of in one sitting. Rent or mortgage, utilities, phone, insurance, subscriptions. Give each one its day of the month.
This is dull and it's the highest-value twenty minutes in the whole app. When you're done, scroll forward three months and look at what you see.
Lesson 3: read a month honestly
A month has two numbers worth knowing: what's already committed, and what's actually yours.
The committed number is your bills, and you just entered them. What's left is the part you get to decide about, and it's almost always smaller than people expect.
Look at next month. Find the day where your balance is at its lowest. That day is the one that matters, because it's where things go wrong if anything is late.
Lesson 4: categories that survive contact
Categories only help if you'd use the same one twice without thinking.
Keep them broad. Food, transport, house, health, fun. If you find yourself hesitating between two, merge them. A category you have to think about is a category you'll eventually stop filling in.
Lesson 5: the balance you can correct
Free shows you a running balance built from what you've entered.
If the number drifts from what your bank says, the fix is Bank Accounts, which is on Plus. You enter the real balance by hand and Buhata works from there. Nothing connects to a bank, deliberately, and there's a whole article about why that decision was made.
What you should be able to do now
- Keep two kinds of money apart without effort
- See a bill coming three months out
- Name the worst day in next month before it arrives
Next: Running a household together.