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MONEY WEEKLY

PERSONAL FINANCE • BUDGETING

Why People Are Quietly Ditching $100-A-Year Budget Apps For This Free “Sunday Sheet”

It does not connect to your bank. It does not renew. And the person who sent it to me works at one of the banks.

By Erin Doyle • September 8, 2026 • 5 min read

A laptop showing a budget spreadsheet on a kitchen table beside a coffee and a phone lying face down

The whole system is one file on a kitchen table. That is the appeal.

I stopped opening my banking app in March.

Not dramatically. I did not decide to. I tapped past it one morning, then again the next, and by June it had drifted two screens over into a folder with the airline apps and the one for parking.

I was not broke. That is the part people tend to get wrong about this. I had a job I liked and money going in every two weeks. I simply had no idea what happened to it between the fifteenth and the thirtieth, and every time I thought about finding out, I found something else to do instead.

I tried everything.

✕ Budgeting apps. Two of them. Both wanted a login to my actual bank, both cost around a hundred a year, and both sat unopened after about nine days.

✕ The notes app. Lasted two weeks. There is no version of this that works when you are typing “coffee 6.40” into a phone at a bus stop.

✕ Cash envelopes. A lovely idea from a world where things are not bought with a tap.

What changed it was my sister-in-law, who has worked in retail banking for eleven years.

We were in her kitchen and I made some joke about being allergic to my own bank balance, and she did not laugh. She took out her phone and sent me a link to a Google Sheet.

“Use this. It is what I actually use. It is not what we sell.”

I told her I was terrible with spreadsheets, which is true.

She said it did not matter, because I would not be building anything. Every box that needs a number says type here. The rest of it does the maths on its own.

THE MECHANISM

An app shows you the past. A sheet shows you the month.

Here is the part she explained that actually landed.

A budgeting app is a rear-view mirror. It connects to your accounts, waits for the money to leave, sorts it into categories, then tells you what already happened. That is useful for accounting. It is close to useless for deciding.

A sheet works the other way round. You put the month in before it happens. Rent, the car, the phone, groceries, whatever is going into savings. What is left at the bottom is not a report. It is a number you are allowed to spend.

The second half is quieter and it mattered more to me. It connects to nothing. No bank login, no third party pulling your transactions, no account to cancel. It sits on your own Google Drive and nobody else can open it.

A notebook, a pen, a coffee and a small stack of envelopes on a kitchen table seen from above

No bank login. No third party. Nothing to cancel.

The Real Test

I did it on a Sunday morning with a coffee, which is why I still call it the Sunday sheet.

It took about twenty minutes. Twenty-six tabs sounds like a lot and it is not, because you only touch three of them to begin with. Income at the top. Bills underneath. Categories down the side.

Then I reached the bottom of the monthly tab and there was a number sitting there.

I looked at it for a while. It was not a good number or a bad number. It was just the first honest one I had seen in about a year, and the relief of it genuinely surprised me.

It turns out the thing I had been avoiding was not my finances. It was not knowing.

Six weeks on, the part I did not expect is that I open it on purpose now. Sunday, coffee, ten minutes. It is not discipline. It stopped being frightening, so there is nothing left to avoid.

A laptop and a coffee on a kitchen table on a quiet Sunday morning

Twenty minutes, once a week. That is the whole routine.

Why Is Everyone Talking About It Now?

Budgeting has quietly become a subscription category. YNAB runs about $109 a year. Monarch is around $100 for its basic tier and $199 for the higher one. That is a recurring charge, forever, for the privilege of looking at your own money.

The Saving Buddy went the other way. One file, built once, yours to keep. You reuse it every January by changing the year in the setup tab, which makes it cheaper than the alternatives the moment you use it twice.

How To Get One

I got in touch with the team to see whether they had anything for readers.

They are running a giveaway for their one-year anniversary. The full spreadsheet, all twenty-six tabs, at no cost. You cover the small processing fee and nothing else.

They were also straight with me about one thing: it is a digital download, so once the file is in your hands the sale is final. What they do offer is support, which I have put below.

★★★★★ Rated 4.9 by real users

The Saving Buddy • Anniversary Giveaway

All 26 tabs. Free today, you only cover the processing fee.

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🛡 What happens if something goes wrong

Worth knowing up front, because it is a digital file and the sale is final once you have downloaded it.

If the file will not open, they send a working replacement at no cost. If you cannot get it set up, their team walks you through it step by step. And if you cannot access the file at all and they cannot fix it, you get a full refund.

It is a real inbox at hello@thesavingbuddy.com, not a form, and they say they answer within a day.

Reviews From Happy Customers

★★★★★

Simple and reassuring

What I loved is how reassuring it feels. You are not left alone with your numbers. It is all guided and there is no judgement in it anywhere.

Rachel P. • Verified Customer

★★★★★

Everything in one place

Before this my finances were scattered between notes and two different apps. Now it is one file and I know where I stand in a couple of minutes.

Hannah J. • Verified Customer

★★★★★

It actually stuck

I had tried budgeting several times and never kept it up. This one is not overwhelming. Once it is set up the system does most of the work and I am finally consistent.

Louis B. • Verified Customer

★★★★★

We stopped going in circles

My wife and I used to have the same conversation about bills every month. Now we open the same sheet and it is all right there. No guessing and no blaming.

David T. • Verified Customer

Claim your free copy

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MONEY WEEKLY

This is an advertorial and not a news article, blog, or consumer protection update. This page receives compensation for products purchased through links on it. The Saving Buddy is a spreadsheet template and is not financial advice. Individual results vary.