Bonobo Budget (Beta)
A fun, simple, and free budgeting app to build a richer life.
What is Bonobo Budgeting?
Imagine you get 100 bananas every month. After your bills and debt are covered, every remaining banana belongs to you. You can save it, spend it, or give it away. The choice is yours.
Some people will tell you to save most of it, others will tell you to spend most of it but there’s no right answer. As long as you know the tradeoffs and make an intentional decision, you are more than qualified to decide how you want to live your life.
Getting started
Add your income
This is easiest if you just use your paycheque because your employer probably deducts taxes for you but if you prefer to use your salary, are self employed or have an inconsistent pay schedule, it might be easier to enter your pretax income. ChatGPT can give you a good idea of your effective income tax rate based on where you live and how much you make etc..
Add your expenses
These are the boring fixed costs that you have to pay on a regular basis: rent, utilities, groceries, subscriptions, memberships, phone bills, insurance, internet, health, transportation, etc..
Add your debts
This could include student loans, car loans, credit card balance, lines of credit, etc.. Mortgages can be considered good debt depending on your situation so you may want to treat it as a monthly expense rather than a debt if you prefer.
Once you add your debts, if you have more than 1, you can sort your debts using one of the popular debt payoff strategies:
-
Avalanche: order debts by interest rate and pay off higher interest rate debt first while paying the minimum payment on all other debt. This is the optimal approach mathematically speaking.
-
Snowball: order debts by amount and pay off the smallest balance first while paying the minimum payment on all other debt. This is the optimal approach for many people because it gives you quicker wins which is really motivating.
Go bananas
Add your Banana accounts: After adding your debts and expenses, everything left over is yours to keep for yourself.
This is money for:
-
Enjoying today
-
Working towards future goals
-
Buying freedom and security
-
Giving to charity
I.e. this is the good stuff.
For example, Anna and I have the following banana accounts:
-
Guilt free spending: 5 bananas each
-
Emergency fund: 5 bananas
-
Donations: 10 bananas
-
Household spending: 2 bananas
-
Gifts: 3 bananas
-
Business and education: 5 bananas
-
Travel: 5 bananas
-
Down payment: 17 bananas
-
Retirement: 10 bananas
Choose your own adventure!