PeacefulMindfulPocket | Mindful Money Management

What Is Zero Based Budgeting

Zero Based Budgeting is a specific way to manage your money, where every dollar gets a job. Here is how it works.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

The Value

Warning

The Fun Part

Customize Your Budget

Your first budget is automatically created for you with example categories and buckets. The demo budget is here to trigger memories of how it might apply to your life. Start by renaming the buckets to suit your lifestyle.

Example: If you rent an apartment, change the name of "Rent/Mortgage" to "Rent," and maybe delete the water and electricity buckets because they might already be included in your rent.

Time expectation: 30 minutes to 1 hour

Set Up Your Income

You should have a rough idea of how many paychecks you receive a month and how much each one is. Go to the income category, and rename the buckets to indicate where they're coming from, and in the expected column write how much each paycheck should be.

Example: If you get paid biweekly and both paychecks are $2,001.36, create "Paycheck 1" for $2,001.36 and "Paycheck 2" for $2,001.36.

Time expectation: 15 to 30 minutes if you need to look this information up

Give Every Dollar a Job

Now the app knows that you have a total income of $4,002.72, and this is where zero-based budgeting comes into play. You have to give every dollar a job. Go through each one of your buckets that you personalized in step 1, and in the planned value column, write down how much you think you spend in that bucket.

Example: For groceries, the planned value should be roughly around $300 per person. For car gas, the planned value should be roughly $80 per vehicle. You can start with these values and adjust as you gain more data.

Repeat this step until you have given every single bucket a planned value. Once you are done, we call this your plan.

Time expectation: 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on how much research you do

Connect Your Bank Account

Connect your bank account using the gear icon at the top of the summary section through Stripe. This will download all of your transactions for the current month, and they will show up in about 5 minutes, so go ahead and grab your favorite beverage (if I may assume you haven't already done so), then proceed to the next step.

Time expectation: 5 minutes + beverage break

Associate Your Transactions

Start to drag and drop your transactions onto your buckets (or double-click the transaction for a searchable menu). Once you associate a transaction with a bucket (i.e., this transaction has been spent out of this bucket), this will reduce the remaining amount left in the bucket you put the transaction in. This lets you see how your previous plan of spending holds up to your actual spending patterns. The feedback loop provided by your transactions to your actual plan is where the magic happens in your mind—lightbulbs of understanding start to fire off.

Example: You might need to research where a transaction came from or understand what items are in that $200 Amazon order. $100 might need to be split between groceries and the other half for home maintenance.

Time expectation: 15 minutes to 1 hour depending on how much research you have to do

The Value You Will Get

We did all of this work to provide insight and data about what the truth of your spending habits are to your brain AND the data it needs to make adjustments. With the way things are broken down, it's very easy to see in which area of your life you are living above your means.

Example: You thought you only spent $300 eating out, but it turns out it was $800.

You will also discover transactions you had completely forgotten about. You had forgotten about Netflix but still got charged for the last 6 months.

With all this insight and data, you will free up cash you would not have known about.

Time expectation: 1 to 3 months, highly dependent on the individual situation. Reach out to us to find out how to speed this up into just your first 2-hour session. It's free; it just requires additional training.

Warning

I have only talked about the happy path; it is not possible for me to cover all possibilities here. Your situation will probably be messier and require specific problem-solving.

In your welcome email, you should have my email at the bottom. It's completely free to ask about any situation that confuses you. I would be happy to help.

The Fun Part

After doing all of this work of understanding your situation and freeing up old spending that does not serve you, you can now begin to strategize how to use the additional funds that you have freed up to take yourself to the next level. This is where certain financial education and principles need to come in—this is your next phase of growth.

When you reach this point, feel free to email us and we can provide guidance.

Time expectation: 1 to 3 months, highly dependent on individual circumstances.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here's exactly what happens when you connect your bank account:

When you give us permission to connect with your bank account, we communicate with Stripe through encrypted, private channels to receive the following information:

• Institution name
• Account name
• Last 4 digits of your account number
• Account type (Checking/Savings/Credit Card)
• Last 3 months of transactions

Coming soon: We'll also request your account balance so we can provide budget-to-bank reconciliation, letting you know when your actual balance differs from what your budget shows.

Some banks clearly display the exact permissions we request, which we love:
1. Transactions
2. Account Balance

What we never see:
• Your username and password (Stripe processes this directly with you)
• Your full bank account number

How we protect your data:

Once we receive your information, we secure it behind multiple layers of protection:

Infrastructure Security:
• Firewalls and private encrypted communication
• Non-public access with alerts and monitoring
• Bad intent detection with automatic blocking
• Zero-day vulnerability protection through custom infrastructure design
• Encryption at rest

Application Security:
• IP limits and 404 limits
• User input validation and escaping
• Encrypted password storage
• Stronger password policies
• 2-Factor Authentication (coming soon)

Security Testing:
• Library scanning for known errors
• Static code analysis for security issues
• Active bug bounty program with responsible disclosure process
• OWASP ZAP automated penetration testing (planned)

Complete data control: When you delete your account, we truly delete everything. No hidden retention, no backup copies.

Personal guarantee: This is the same budgeting app I use for my own family's finances. I've aligned my security interests directly with yours.

We believe you deserve to know exactly how your data is handled, not just trust vague promises.

I've been using zero-based budgeting for 10 years and have helped others manage budgets ranging from $55k to $210k annually, so I have a unique perspective on why this centuries-old method works so well.

This technique is so powerful that when my family faced 16 months of unemployment, our zero-based budgeting - both the savings it helped us build and the spending discipline it brought during that crisis - kept us afloat when others might have lost everything.

Zero-based budgeting isn't my approach - it's been around for centuries and is very popular for managing household income in countries like Japan even today. The magic in why your finances improve is in the zero-based methodology itself, and you can get a better idea of this in the "What is zero based budgeting" section above if you haven't done so already.

What our app does really well is bring additional conveniences and features that does not exist elsewhere.

For example, we are the only app that makes you write your own automation rules to categorize your transactions, and send you emails about exactly what your rules performed to keep you in the loop.

We also offer master templates that protect your plan from monthly chaos - no other budgeting app offers this level of planning stability (currently in development).

We're also working on bringing fun and gamification to budgeting, which I'm incredibly excited about - but unfortunately we're not there yet.

Mint isn't really comparable since it's not zero-based budgeting - it just tells you what you spent in hindsight. We focus on zero-based budgeting because that's where the real power is in helping you control your spending habits.

YNAB and EveryDollar are excellent apps that we've personally used for years, and they both deserve respect. We're doing some things differently in terms of features:

1. Master templating - protect your budgets from monthly chaos
2. User-created rules for automated transaction allocations - this is a convenience feature that's the middle ground between automation AND staying on top of your budget (not letting it disappear into nothing)
3. All activity gets logged in the budget ledger with date and time stamps so when you go back to do research you know exactly when something happened. We're also adding a notes section so you can leave notes for your future self.

I like to think we're raising the bar for budgeting apps by including these features.

Our other core value is that as a small business, we're willing to be more experimental and have a bit more fun. For example, we might do some unconventional things when it comes to gamification of budgets.

We're not going to drive a hard sale here - feel free to check us out if you're interested in seeing something different! It's free for 7 days without a credit card, so you can just try it out and delete it if it doesn't work for you.

Most budgets don't fail because of lack of discipline - they fail because you hit a problem you can't solve, it persists, and you eventually give up. You're more likely to succeed with us because you have free access to a financial coach via email and phone calls to help solve these specific problems.

For example, some people struggle when their partner doesn't budget and maintains their own spending habits - this absolutely kills the other partner's motivation and budget. In this situation, we help you figure out where things are going wrong, first individually with you, then with your partner if needed.

Another common issue: "I can't keep my grocery budget in check even though I'm giving it a reasonable amount." We dig deep into your specific situation by asking tons of questions to understand the full context. Do you cook from home? Do you prefer frozen meals? Why don't you cook from home - are you exhausted after 12-hour workdays? Is it realistic to expect yourself to cook after such long days? Would meal planning work better? What types of foods should you focus on? Can you take advantage of bulk discounts?

We refuse to let you struggle with unsolved problems. All you have to do is reach out using the email address in your welcome message, and we'll work through whatever is blocking your success.

I totally hear this fear - let me work through this with you.

You don't need to be good at math because this is simpler than you think. First of all, you don't need to do any mental arithmetic - just use the calculator on your phone. Usually you'll just be adding and subtracting values at most. It's very rare that you have to use multiplication or division.

If you get stuck in a specific situation - for example, if you're trying to figure out whether a bulk purchase is actually saving you money and get stuck with the math - just reach out using the email address at the bottom of your welcome email. We'll help you better understand your situation (it's free). We'll first ask questions to understand your specific circumstances, then help you work through whatever you're trying to figure out.

The goal isn't to make you a math expert - it's to help you take control of your money using simple tools and having support when you need it.

Yes it does, and actually irregular income makes budgeting MORE important because you need to plan for the valleys, not just the peaks.

The core value you get is still the same, just with a little additional complexity to manage. You'll still plan how much you need to spend in each aspect of your life AND see how much your true spending for each aspect is. This is the fundamental benefit you get whether your income varies or not.

There are many solutions you can deploy for irregular income:

• You can have a buffer bucket - during abundant months you put money in like charging a battery, then take it out during lean months
• You can let a bucket go negative for a month or two if you know income is coming soon
• You can plan to spend only the minimum you'll ever receive, then use any extra income to better prepare for future months

Feel free to reach out using the email address at the bottom of your welcome email and let us understand your specific situation. We can help problem-solve with you for absolutely free. We bring both experience and insights from helping other freelancers in similar situations, so we can share what's worked for others facing the same challenges.

This is totally fine and normal - I've had to create multiple budgets as well. Feel free to just create a new budget and delete the old one. Most of the time there's a path to recover the old budget, so feel free to reach out using the email at the bottom of your welcome email. We can not only help you recover your problem budget but probably also help you understand how to prevent it in the future. This is exactly why we offer free coaching support.

Yes, we allow each budget to include up to 3 credit cards. We know some people have more than this and are amazed they can sustain the energy to manage all those cards. We're not convinced you're getting real value beyond 3 cards, so we limit it there to help keep your budget manageable.

We also believe each budget should only have 1 checking account - it gets confusing tracking movements between multiple accounts. You can create multiple budgets with us if needed, but only 1 checking account per budget keeps things clear and manageable.

We offer multiple support channels to match your needs and budget:

Free Support:
• Email support via the address in your welcome email - questions go directly to the founder for personalized responses within 24 hours.
• AI chatbot (bottom right of your screen) trained on both app features and budgeting questions - can also connect you to a human when needed

Premium Support:
• Direct 1-on-1 coaching sessions ($60/hour via Google Meets) where we listen deeply to your situation and provide personalized solutions

Go to settings and click "delete my account." After 2 additional verification steps, we'll delete your account completely.

Your account will be permanently deleted with no hidden retention - it's physically no longer possible to recover your account or data. You'll receive an account deletion confirmation email with the exact date, time, and actions we took during the deletion process.

Stop sleepwalking through your finances—
make every dollar intentional.