Money habits
How to categorise expenses so the data is actually useful
Most category lists describe the past. A useful one answers a question you will actually ask. Seven rules from five years of a household ledger.
Insights
How to know what a household is actually worth.
Long and specific, out of one ledger that has been reconciled every month since 2021 rather than out of a list of tips. Two tracks: keeping the books well, and getting the most out of the app.
App guides
Getting your investments in without typing them
How Cifrea reads a broker statement PDF, why it records a month-end value rather than a live price, and what to do if your broker lays the page out differently.
Money habits
Tracking a mortgage properly: capital, interest, and what a house really costs
Booking the whole payment as an expense overstates what your home costs, by a share that changes every year. Here is the split, and what else it costs.
Money habits
What your savings rate actually is
Almost everyone computes it wrong, and two mistakes account for nearly all of it. Here is the definition that survives contact with a real ledger.
Money habits
The monthly reconcile: twenty minutes that make every number true
A ledger nobody checks against the bank is a story about your money, not a record of it. What reconciling is, when to do it, and what a gap means.
App guides
Every road into the ledger, and where they meet
By hand, from a receipt, from a bank text, from an Apple Pay tap, from a statement or a broker PDF. Each road has a job, and all of them end in Approvals.
App guides
Importing a bank statement without creating a mess
Importing beats typing, and has about six ways to quietly corrupt a ledger. Here is each one, and how to avoid it.
Money habits
Income statement vs balance sheet, for a household
Two statements, two questions, and one link between them that catches your mistakes automatically. The vocabulary, without the accounting degree.
Money habits
Why most budgets fail in month three
Not for lack of discipline. A budget is a forecast of your own behaviour, and month three is when reality has enough evidence against it.
Money habits
Tracking net worth across several currencies
Hold more than one currency and your net worth moves for reasons that have nothing to do with you. How to separate what you did from what the rate did.
App guides
Your first week: what to set up, and in what order
Most people set up a finance app in the wrong order and quietly stop. Here is the sequence that works, and why each step comes before the next.
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Money habits
How to keep a household ledger that tells you something useful. Categories, reconciliation, several currencies, property. None of it needs the app. It works just as well in a spreadsheet.
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Getting real value out of the app. Workflows, imports, shared household ledgers, and the features that are easy to miss.
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