
I've been building a zero-based budgeting for household life, self-employment, and business
Happy Sunday! I’m the developer of ReadyCents, so this is a Sunday dev post.
I started working on ReadyCents after I was injured on the job and was waiting for the verdict of what to do next with my life.
It has been an ongoing build since then, shaped by the way I actually needed to manage money. Zero-based budgeting and the core of YNAB still made sense to me and helped me save, but the way I needed to manage my money moving forward stopped fitting neatly inside one personal monthly budget.
I needed room for household decisions, self-employment income, business expenses, tax set-asides, irregular months, and everything in between, and it didn't give me that.
ReadyCents is currently focused on cloud plans and mobile, though self-hosting is also an option.
One thing I cared about from the start was making switching less painful. When you import a YNAB budget, ReadyCents can carry over scheduled transactions and memos, and you can easily adjust anything bank balances and or transactions, so you are not rebuilding your whole system from scratch once you hit your budget.
What I’m also doing differently:
• Making the starting experience friendlier for people who are new to envelope budgeting or budgeting in general.
• Letting people shape their own categories, layouts, themes, and reports without fighting the app
• Supporting personal, household, and business budgets in one place
• Keeping manual-first budgeting available on any plan, connections are always optional through SimpleFIN, Lunch Flow, or Plaid depending on the plan.
• Making routine money tasks easier to work through, including review queues, transaction filters, budget planning, calendar views, and reports
I’m currently opening a small founding community.
There are two one-time founder options: Connected Basic starts at $1, where you bring your own connection provider, and Cloud Premium is $10 with managed Plaid logins included. Both include lifetime plan access, with provider fees separate where applicable.
Founder details and product preview:
https://www.readycents.com/founder
If you have used YNAB, Actual, ZeroSum, Liquid Budget, or another envelope budgeting tool, I would love to know:
What do you wish a zero-based budgeting app understood about your actual money flow? And if you are self-employed, freelance, run a business, or manage side projects, or you budget with a partner, household, a single parent, what makes you stay with a budgeting app long term instead of eventually moving on?
P.S: I’m also looking for a few people to try onboarding or a YNAB import with me over a quick Zoom or Google Meet, then tell me where it feels confusing, awkward, or incomplete.
If you are interested in that, or in helping test the mobile app, we’ll share sign-up links for both next Sunday here, and check out r/ReadyCents. Mobile public beta is not open just yet, but early feedback will directly shape it.