Spare.

Someone who already knows how to budget. They pay their bills on time, they aren’t in trouble, they just can’t account for where the leftover money goes. They don’t need a lesson, they need to see the number.

The main use is standing at a counter, phone in hand, logging what you just bought. Reviewing the month and adjusting the goal happen later and less often.

We were planning to buy a house and I had the numbers in an Excel workbook. I wanted something my wife and I could both use from our phones instead of a spreadsheet only one of us understood.

Spare has no bank connection and I don’t plan to add one. Typing the purchase in is the part that makes you notice it. Import would skip that. Each purchase also records whether it was a want or a need and how it felt, because spotting patterns in that is the whole point.

Setup is income after tax, bills (one figure or itemised) and a savings goal. The discretionary budget is income − bills − savings goal. Day to day you add purchases: amount, category, want or need, a note, the date. Then there’s a dashboard, category breakdown, trends, a calendar and a ledger for the month, plus recurring charges for the things that come back.

Next.js App Router, Supabase for auth and Postgres with row-level security per user, shadcn/ui on Tailwind, Recharts for the charts, and Stripe for a free tier and a $1.99/month Pro. It ships a web manifest so it can sit on an iPhone home screen. It’s designed for the phone first; desktop works but is second.

• Leaving out bank sync is what makes the app work. Sometimes the missing feature is the product.
• Purchase dates are plain YYYY-MM-DD strings, never a Date. Timezones only cause problems when the question is what you bought on Tuesday.
• Possibly a different component library. shadcn/ui is fine, but I would try something else next time.