Jesse Mecham

Built You Need a Budget out of a spreadsheet he and his wife made as newlyweds trying to stretch a student income, and sold it before it became software.

The method rests on four rules, the first of which does the work: give every dollar a job, so budgeting is allocating money you already have rather than forecasting money you might get.

Mecham is blunt that most budgeting fails because it is prediction dressed as planning. The company has been criticised for moving to a subscription and for the price, which is a business argument rather than a methodological one.