Showerthought: my $3 notebook beat every budgeting app I tried

I installed three budgeting apps over the past year and still felt broke, so in January I switched to a $3 spiral notebook from the drugstore in Boise and a pen. Writing down every purchase by hand makes me feel it somehow, and we cut $210 off our monthly spending in the first 8 weeks. The apps were too easy to ignore, if that makes sense. Has anyone else gone back to paper and stuck with it?

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harper_murphy11d ago

The line about the apps being too easy to ignore really hits. Back in college I tried one of those calorie counting apps for like two weeks and gave up because tapping a screen felt like a chore, but when I wrote my meals on a sticky note stuck to the fridge I actually stuck with it for a whole semester. Something about the pen and paper makes your brain slow down and pay attention, like you can't just swipe past it. My wife still teases me about the pile of sticky notes I kept in my desk drawer. Anyway the notebook thing makes sense to me, and $210 in 8 weeks is no joke.

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