I've been building a zero-based budgeting for household life, self-employment, and business

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.

https://preview.redd.it/03fjs17zpith1.png?width=1254&format=png&auto=webp&s=d61d686f95260e92bbc335db9cf346a4b76b792e

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u/JarodGabriel — 11 days ago

I built a manual-first YNAB alternative, and I am opening a small founder offer

I’m building ReadyCents, and I know this is a self-promotion post, so I would rather be straightforward than write a launch pitch.

ReadyCents is a manual-first zero-based budgeting app. You can budget manually for free (no ads ever, not even for a book). Bank connections are always optional, and the app is built around giving every dollar a job, moving money when life changes, and seeing the trade-off before you make it.

Some of the recent work:

• Optional envelope suggestions during imports. They use payee rules and aliases you already created, keep the original bank description visible, and they are off by default.

• Searchable money movement between envelopes, in either direction.

• Stimulation and Minimalism layouts, for people who want either more context or less visual noise in their Budget view.

I also opened a small founder offer for people who want to support the project early.

Connected Basic is $1 USD, paid once. It includes advanced insights and Tax Toolkit. If you want bank sync, you bring your own SimpleFIN or Lunch Flow subscription. Their provider fees are separate. Managed Plaid is not included.

Cloud Premium is $10 USD, paid once. It includes advanced insights, Tax Toolkit, and ten managed Plaid institution logins. You can still use your own provider if you prefer. Extra Plaid capacity and outside provider fees are separate.

There is no monthly or annual renewal for either founder purchase. Manual budgeting is still available on the free plan.

What is not finished yet: I am still working on the Reports redesign and bulk nested envelopes. I would rather say that plainly than imply that ReadyCents is finished or that it will fit everyone already.

More founder details: https://readycents.com/founders

If you use YNAB, and or you used to use it like myself, or have tried other alternatives, I would genuinely like to know what you think newer budgeting apps keep getting wrong. I am especially interested in what would make you trust one enough to put a real budget in it.

Oh, and yes, ReadyCents can import from YNAB. The mobile app is in beta too. I also started r/ReadyCents if you want to follow along.

u/JarodGabriel — 1 month ago

Anyone else getting a bunch of spam calls lately ?

I've been with Visible for 2+ years and this is the first time I'm getting more than just one or two spam calls throughout the month. It's like every single day.

With my Google Assistant monitoring calls the recording sounds like the same person on the other end every time with each of these different numbers.

Has anyone actually used a service like Delete Me ??? Cause this is just making me mad lol

u/JarodGabriel — 2 months ago

How are self-employed couples handling personal, shared, and business money without creating three separate systems?

I'm building ReadyCents. But this was a problem I hit personally before I ever started building anything, and I'm genuinely curious how the rest of you YNAB folks handle it.

Zero-based still works for me. The method isn't the issue. What broke was trying to make one budget cover everything once life got complicated.

At one point I was juggling:

  • my own personal spending
  • shared household spending
  • self-employed business expenses
  • tax money that had to stay visible and untouched

I could split those across separate tools and spreadsheets, but then I'd have to open three things to answer one question.

Or I could make separate budgets in the same app, which is what I did in YNAB. But that's where I realized the split wasn't actually solving anything, because each budget still had the exact same tools. I didn't need my business budget to have a shared grocery envelope. I didn't need my household budget carrying tax tracking in a category. It was the same budget, same tools, just different names. So I was still doing manual workarounds in all three, and it was tanking my productivity instead of helping it.

So how are you all actually doing this?

  • Separate budgets for personal, shared, and business?
  • One budget with really disciplined categories?
  • A spreadsheet running alongside your app?
  • Something else?

I built ReadyCents around this exact problem, so I'm biased. But I'm more interested in where your setup starts costing you time, because that's what I'm still designing around.

If any of this sounds like your situation, it's free to try with manual accounts, no card, no sync required. ReadyCents I'd rather you poke holes in it than take my word for it.

u/JarodGabriel — 2 months ago

I built ReadyCents, because my life exceeded what YNAB had to offer.

I wanted to keep my personal budget private, share the household budget with a partner, handle self-employed income and tax set-asides properly, and still have one system that made sense when I opened it.

So I built ReadyCents.

The difference is not just another YNAB interface.

ReadyCents was built to handle:

Personal, household, and business budgets in one system.

Shared household budgeting without merging every private category or account, including with kids.

Business classification, tax-year summaries, reports, and exports.

Manual budgeting (always), YNAB and CSV imports, or bank connections through Plaid, SimpleFIN, or Lunch Flow.

Data export and a self-hosted option for people who want more control.

Credit card rewards tracking and the ability to carry overspending into the following month.

A budget screen is easy to understand. The hard part is keeping the underlying money model useful when real life gets more complicated than one checking account and a few categories.

If your current setup means a budgeting app plus a spreadsheet, plus manual tax tracking, plus separate household workarounds, that is the problem I built ReadyCents to solve.

Looking for beta testers on Mobile and Web ReadyCents.

I would love candid feedback from people here: where does your current budgeting setup start to break down?

u/JarodGabriel — 2 months ago

FIXED: 1Password kept asking for 2FA and couldn’t save the token on macOS (-25293) — no Keychain reset needed

I wanted to follow up on my original post because I finally fixed the problem without resetting my entire macOS Keychain.

Don’t delete random credentials. Check your logs or send 1Password a diagnostics report first.

The problem I was having was with one stale/inaccessible entry in the login Keychain:

1Password:dsecret-[account UUID]

This was repeatedly not saving my credentials when I signed in. Thus, every single time I needed to use the app, I had to sign back in with my authentication code. Just logging out and resetting my Mac didn't work. I had to completely quit 1Password and my browser, delete only that entry, then reopen 1Password, and authenticate again. This allowed 1Password to create a fresh token, and it has been working normally since, including after restarting the app and browser.

However, any one who is non technical and stumbles on this post, I highly suggest that before doing this, make sure you have your Emergency Kit, account password, and you have access to your authenticator application that is outside of 1Password. And make sure you don't delete the other 1Password Keychain entries.

Also check whether your Mac recently updated. My problems started shortly after macOS 26.5.2 was installed. I can’t prove the update caused it, but the timing fits.

Windows users can apparently experience the same message through Windows Credential Manager, but I haven’t personally verified the equivalent entry there, because I am not having the issue with my Windows, just Mac.

Hopefully this saves someone from unnecessarily resetting their entire Keychain.

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u/JarodGabriel — 3 months ago

Mac Keychain error prevents 1Password from retaining 2FA

My 1Password Mac app keeps asking for 2FA. The code verifies successfully, but the app immediately fails to save the token with macOS Keychain error -25293, so authentication lasts only for that unlock session.

I also tried the support-recommended disable/reenable 2FA flow, but the app says it is unable to turn off 2FA and tells me to contact support. The CLI is affected too because it cannot create a delegated session.

I’m on 1Password 8.12.28 and macOS 26.5.2. I have already sent a diagnostics report to support. Has anyone received a safe, targeted fix for this Keychain failure?

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u/JarodGabriel — 3 months ago

I left YNAB and built my own zero-based budget with tax set-aside baked in meet ReadyCents

https://preview.redd.it/7ct1a8vlyz9h1.png?width=1477&format=png&auto=webp&s=51a4baa30bdf6b47798607f299dd26629ebf5b7a

Hey all, first time really putting this out there, aside from a comment last week.

I've been building a zero based budgeting app called ReadyCents, and I've finally hit a point where I don't want to keep it to myself anymore. I've been heads down on this for a good while now.

The reason I started it is pretty simple. I've been self employed for about 3 years, and between YNAB's price creeping up and me juggling a bunch of separate tools for spending, savings, and taxes, though none of it really fit how I actually live. So I just started building the thing I wished existed.

The part I'm most proud of is that tax tracking is built right in. If you're self employed, or you work a W2 and pick up side income, it helps you set money aside as you earn instead of scrambling every April or every quarter. It's built around real paycheck rhythms too, so whether you get paid monthly, biweekly, or it's all over the place like mine, it works.

Here's some of what it does:

Taxes baked in. You set a percentage to hold back (say 25%), tag your deductible expenses, and it shows your estimated taxable income plus a quarterly view as the year goes. You can export a CSV at the end of the year. (To be clear, it helps you set aside and estimate. It's not doing your filing or telling you your final tax bill.)

Real zero based budgeting. Every dollar gets a job. You can budget at the category group level and also break things into subcategories, so you can fund a whole group and then split it across categories after a transaction actually lands. You can even set a credit card up as a checking account and it still behaves like a credit card on the budget side.

Rollover that actually makes sense. If you overspend a category/s, that overspending rolls forward too, so nothing just quietly disappears. Even the notes you write for a month can carry over to the next one.

A calendar so you can see what's landing and when, like bills, paychecks, and your projected cash flow. You can also add a transaction right from any day.

Reports for spending by category, income vs expenses, and net worth over time.

A debt payoff coach that tracks your debt and tells you the next best move in plain English instead of just showing you a scary number.

A few things I honestly haven't seen other budgeting apps talk about:

Color vision support. On top of light and dark themes, accent colors, and coloring your category groups, there are actual color blindness palettes (deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia, achromatopsia) so the green, amber, and red status colors aren't useless to you.

A what if mode. You can stress test the next 6 months and drop in a possible expense, like a new car payment, to see how it would hit you, all without touching your real budget, or creating a new budget, and if you think it makes sense you can add the new category/s to your actual budget in just a click.

You can hide your debt. If you're paying it down and you don't want that number staring at you every time you open the app, you can just hide it from the sidebar.

Made with sharing your screen in mind. If you make videos or you're doing a demo, you can hide your email (and your debt numbers) so you can show the app without showing your whole life.

Easy to come over from YNAB. You can import your YNAB data and then connect your accounts with SimpleFin, Plaid, or both, whatever you prefer.

One login, a few budgets. Keep a personal budget, a shared household one, and a business one, all separate. And if you'd rather host it yourself and keep your data fully in your hands, you can do that too.

Where it's at right now: still in development and heading toward a beta with real people. It's desktop and iPad first at the moment, and I've got iOS and Android apps in the works. No website yet, that'll go up once I finish some bugs, based on some family feedback.

The best part, you get a 60 day free trial! 30 to 45 days honestly isn't enough to test out something that will help you with your money. Which is why you get 60 days to try it out.

On pricing, I want to be upfront, and I really do want your input. I'm building this to be affordable and not nickel and dime anyone later. Here's roughly where my head is at:

  • Manual budgeting is free, full stop. You get the budgeting and the tax tracking without paying a cent. You only pay if you want your transactions to flow in automatically from your bank, since that part actually costs me to run.
  • Bring your own bank connection with SimpleFin: around $10 a month, or $60 a year. It can be cheaper because SimpleFin barely costs me anything when you bring your own connection.
  • Managed bank sync with Plaid, where I handle the connection for you: around $15 a month, or $84 a year.
  • Self hosting: a one time $49, then it's yours, on your own server with your own keys.

A few honest questions:

  1. Does that feel fair, or off?
  2. What would you pay for sync tiers?
  3. What's the price where you'd just say no?
  4. What would you like to be customizable ?

If this sounds like something you've been wanting, leave a comment and tell me what matters most to you. I'm keeping a list of folks who want first crack at the beta.

https://preview.redd.it/vgwzb5l2yz9h1.png?width=1661&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7794456829b6a64c143c94751735e749153faa6

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u/JarodGabriel — 4 months ago

Did Spotify stop completely with gift cards, both digital and physical?

For the last 6 years I've paid for my Spotify a year at a time using the $99 12-month gift card. It was the whole system for me. Buy the card once, redeem it, done, don't think about it again until next year. No monthly charge to babysit, and and extra amount of savings in my bank account annual.

This year I went to do my usual thing and every place I normally buy from either doesn't carry it anymore, I looked for both digital or physical and nothing. Not the $99 annual, not the 3 month, not anything. The pegs are just empty.... Walmart, Target... Costco ...

So I'm trying to figure out if this is actually dead or if I'm just looking in the wrong places. Did Spotify fully kill off gift cards, digital and physical both? Or is there still somewhere legit selling them that I'm missing?

If they really are gone, what's everyone who paid annually doing now? Since they upped their prices that means I have roughly 160 bucks I have to give over every year. YouTube Music isn't even remotely close to the flexibility I have with my music.

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u/JarodGabriel — 4 months ago

[US, Under $1000] Need a laptop for gaming and coding, something that can act as a sandbox for me

Country USA

Budget Under $1,000 USD

Are you open to refurbs/used options? Yes, but only from retailers with a certified refurbishment program that verifies specs and functionality fully, nothing hidden or held back.

Screen size 13" to 15", needs to be portable enough to move between home, family, and coffee shops without being a hassle

Weight limit Reasonably light, portability matters

Purpose Gaming, coding experimentation, and general sandbox use

Form factor Standard/Clamshell

Intended usage Coding and experimenting locally, VS Code, dev environments, possibly AI tools. I already have a MacBook Air for my actual work so this is purely a sandbox machine I can break and learn on without worry. For gaming, I'm currently into titles like Stray, Resident Evil, The Sims, and Water Park Simulator, but I expect to push into more graphically intense games over time as my interests grow. I'd like the hardware to have some room to grow with me. Will also be connected to an external monitor regularly.

Desired battery life 4 to 6 hours is fine. Will mostly be plugged in when on the external monitor, so battery isn't a top priority.

Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life:

Performance, weight, size, battery life

Info/Requirements No strong brand preference, though Asus and Lenovo have been suggested before. I want a screen that still looks decent when not plugged into an external monitor. Open to Windows or Linux, leaning toward whatever works best as a coding and gaming sandbox. Not looking to baby this machine the way I do my MacBook, so value and durability matter more than premium feel. No preference on Intel vs AMD.

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u/JarodGabriel — 4 months ago
▲ 31 r/eds

Why do phlebotomists say "I don't know who told you you were a hard stick"?

Had labs done this morning for two different doctors. Early, half awake, not my best state. I tell the phlebotomist I'm a hard stick like I always do. She doesn't ask where people usually get it, doesn't ask about my veins, just gets the needle out and goes for it. No warning, nothing. She got it on the first try, which is fine, great, whatever.

But then she said it. "I don't know who told you you were a hard stick."

I've been a hard stick since I was five years old. Probably longer, but I was adopted so I don't have the full history. I was diagnosed with EDS at nine, and I'm pretty sure that's exactly why. My veins roll, they're small, and most people reach for a butterfly needle because the standard gauge hurts more than it has to. On top of that, I bruise easily after draws, which is its own thing. That's part of why I always try to ask for someone experienced before they start. Sometimes that actually helps. Sometimes I don't get a choice.

It doesn't matter how hydrated I am or how good my week has been. This has never not been an issue.

Someone getting it on the first try doesn't erase twenty-plus years of difficult draws. It just means today was a good day, or she was skilled, or both. That doesn't make me wrong about my own body.

Saying "I don't know who told you that" to a chronic illness patient who knows their veins is the medical equivalent of telling a lesbian she just hasn't met the right guy. It's dismissive. It invalidates something real that I've been managing my whole life. And it makes me feel like I have to prove that I'm difficult before I'm allowed to advocate for myself.

Does anyone else get this? And do you have a script for responding in the moment? Because I never know what to say when it happens. It just makes me so angry when I'm heading out the door.

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u/JarodGabriel — 4 months ago