Does anyone else find it difficult to have a clear picture of their finances after taxes?
Last tax season I owed way more than I expected. Not because I wasn't making money — because I kept looking at my bank balance and thinking "I'm doing fine" without accounting for the 30%+ that wasn't really mine.
The problem with every budgeting app I tried is they show you your income as if it's all yours. But as a freelancer, that Stripe deposit isn't your full paycheck — a chunk of it belongs to the IRS before you even touch it.
So I built something that shows your finances the way they actually are:
- Income displayed after estimated taxes based, not before
- Automatically calculates what to set aside your tax reserve as money comes in and tracks your EOY reserves
- Tracks your real spendable budget each month based on 12 month average
- Connects to your bank to auto-categorize everything with manual overrides
I built this for myself, but thought maybe others would find it useful or want to try it out. Do you have a system for handling taxes throughout the year, or do you just figure it out in April?