家計簿 · the household ledger

Budgeting that writes itself down

Four spending categories, one savings promise made before the month starts, and four questions answered when it ends. Published in 1904, and this site has done the arithmetic around it.

What is kakeibo?Open the guide library

Or start from a number you are saving for

All 294 worked targets →

The month, plannedA worked example

CurrencyMonthly incomeSavings promise

Savings promise$600Moved out first, before a single envelope is filled
Survival$1,700Rent, food, power, transport, insurance
Optional$1,020Enjoyable and stoppable, and not a naughty list
Culture$340Books, courses, exhibitions, anything that improves you
Extra$340Repairs, gifts, the vet, the surprise not had yet

15 percent saved$3,400 left to divide$33.51 a day, Optional

Open the full four envelope planner →

Live arithmetic, running in your browser. The split is our suggested starting shape for a blank ledger, not a rule kakeibo ships, and every calculator here lets you move it.

Published1904By Hani Motoko, in the household magazine she edited
CategoriesFourSurvival, Optional, Culture, Extra
QuestionsFourAsked once a month, in writing
Sorted examples130Everyday expenses argued into one envelope each
Worked targets294Amounts and horizons, each in three currencies

Not claimed

Nothing on this site repeats the claim that kakeibo saves 20 to 35 percent. We went looking for a primary source and could not find one.

Where every expense goesAll 130 sorted examples →

Four envelopes, not thirty categories

Few enough to hold in your head at the counter, which is where the decision actually gets made.

NeedsSurvivalStopping any of it has consequences beyond disappointment.RentElectricityWeekly grocery shopPublic transport passSee the whole envelope WantsOptionalThis spending costs you pleasure rather than function.Takeaway coffeeStreaming subscriptionsNew clothes you did not needHaircuts beyond a basic trimSee the whole envelope Self improvementCultureKakeibo keeps this apart so it is not the first thing cut.BooksMuseum entry or membershipMusical instrument lessonsSports club membershipSee the whole envelope UnexpectedExtraThese costs are not monthly, but they always arrive.Car repairBirthday giftsEmergency dental workParking fines and penaltiesSee the whole envelope

130 everyday expenses, each argued into one envelope, with the awkward cases settled separately rather than left to you.

The libraryThe whole library →

Written for the places people actually get stuck

A guide for every sticking point the method has, and each one named the search it exists to answer before it was written.

Start here · EvidenceDoes kakeibo actually work? What the evidence really saysThe 20 to 35 percent saving claim traced to nothing, said plainly, then the three mechanisms that are genuinely defensible: recording at the moment, a savings promise moved first, and a scheduled monthly pause.9 min read

Then find the month you are actually having

You have never kept a ledgerYour first month, in orderDay one setup, a first week where nothing gets trimmed, and what to do when week three slips.9 min read Survival takes most of itKakeibo on a low incomeWhen there is nothing left to trim, the value is knowing the number before the month starts.8 min read Two people, one householdKakeibo for couplesOne ledger rather than two, and a reflection run as a conversation rather than an audit.8 min read The money moves before you doKakeibo with a credit cardCards, subscriptions, and the lag between the decision and the money actually leaving.5 min read No two paydays are alikeKakeibo with irregular incomePlan Survival from your lowest realistic month, then give a good month a job.8 min read You would rather use paperSetting up the notebookThe plan page, the daily spread, the weekly check and the monthly reckoning.9 min read

The rest of the library

Sorting an awkward expense, the arithmetic behind a savings rate, printables and bound planners, the history the method came out of, and the case for paper against a spreadsheet or an app. Written to the same standard, published on a schedule.

Open the guide library

Run the numbersEvery calculator →

The part a computer should do

Free, instant, and running entirely in your browser: nothing you type on this site is sent anywhere.

How do I split my income the kakeibo way?Kakeibo calculatorIncome in, four envelopes out, with the savings promise taken off the top the way the method insists.What does my goal cost per month, week and day?Savings target calculatorAny amount, any deadline. The four figures come back first and the reasoning follows underneath.What shape did my month actually have?Four category splitPut a real month in and read it back as Survival, Optional, Culture and Extra, each as a share of income.Which allocation suits my income better?Kakeibo vs 50/30/20One income, both plans, side by side, with the structural difference spelled out under the numbers.How much can today cost without breaking the plan?Safe to spend todayIncome minus commitments minus the promise, divided by the days left. The number for 4pm on a Thursday.Am I doing better than last month?Savings rateThe one figure that survives a pay rise, plus how many months of spending your balance covers.

Start from the numberAll 294 targets →

Every common savings target, already worked out

Pick the amount and the horizon. The division is done, and so is the part most budgeting pages skip: which of the four envelopes gives the money up.

$10,000 in 12 monthsOpen it →

Every month$833or $840 as a round standing transfer

Two weeks$385
Week$192
Day$27.38
Entries365

Which envelope gives it up

Optional$458
Culture$167
Extra$208

Total moved to savings$833

At a 20 percent savings rate that is take home pay of $4,167 a month, leaving $3,333 to live on. The page runs that ladder from 10 percent to 30.

Every amount, on every horizonA month, in US dollars

Swipe the sheet for the longer horizons

Months →	3	6	9	12	18	24	36
$500	$167	$83.33	$55.56	$41.67	$27.78	$20.83	$13.89
$1,000	$333	$167	$111	$83.33	$55.56	$41.67	$27.78
$2,000	$667	$333	$222	$167	$111	$83.33	$55.56
$3,000	$1,000	$500	$333	$250	$167	$125	$83.33
$5,000	$1,667	$833	$556	$417	$278	$208	$139
$7,500	$2,500	$1,250	$833	$625	$417	$313	$208
$10,000	$3,333	$1,667	$1,111	$833	$556	$417	$278
$15,000	$5,000	$2,500	$1,667	$1,250	$833	$625	$417
$20,000	$6,667	$3,333	$2,222	$1,667	$1,111	$833	$556
$25,000	$8,333	$4,167	$2,778	$2,083	$1,389	$1,042	$694
$30,000	$10,000	$5,000	$3,333	$2,500	$1,667	$1,250	$833
$50,000	$16,667	$8,333	$5,556	$4,167	$2,778	$2,083	$1,389
$75,000	$25,000	$12,500	$8,333	$6,250	$4,167	$3,125	$2,083
$100,000	$33,333	$16,667	$11,111	$8,333	$5,556	$4,167	$2,778

What it costs a day

Under $3
$3 to $8
$8 to $20
$20 to $50
$50 to $120
$120 and up

Above $50 a day the money stops coming out of Optional alone and starts coming out of rent, transport and insurance. The ringed cell is the one worked out in full here, and the same sheet runs in pounds and Australian dollars.

Choosing between methodsBoth comparisons →

Kakeibo, compared honestly

We make a kakeibo app, so treat these with the appropriate suspicion and then read them anyway: both pages name the job the alternative does better.

One pay packet, divided twice$4,000 a month

50/30/20 Three shares, fixed by the rule

Needs $2,000
Wants $1,200
Savings $800

Kakeibo A promise, then four envelopes

Promise $600
Survival $1,700
Optional $1,020
Culture $340
Extra $340

The same take home pay, divided twice. The rule fixes the savings figure; the ledger moves out the promise you chose, then fills four envelopes.

Ledger against ratioKakeibo vs the 50/30/20 rule

The savings figureThe one you choose, moved out before the envelopes are filledTwenty percent of take home pay, set for you

What it asks each monthAn entry per purchase, and four questions at the endNothing, unless you check

Adopting itAn hour, then a month of measuringAbout thirty seconds

When housing runs highIt reports the number and moves onThe ratio has no advice left to give

Where the rule wins: it is faster, easier to run jointly, and it sets the savings figure for you.

Read the comparison

When each method does its workOne month

KakeiboFree, a notebook

YNABA subscription

EnvelopesCash only

Cash stuffingCash, filmed

Blocks are the moments a method asks something of you. The red ticks are kakeibo entries, and the last block is the monthly reflection.

Four methodsKakeibo vs YNAB, envelopes and cash stuffing

CategoriesFour, fixed by the methodAs many as you build, or one per envelope

What it costsFree, a notebook or the appA subscription for YNAB, a binder for the rest

Strongest atAwareness, and the written monthly reviewIrregular bills, hard limits, motivation

Weakest atForecasting the months aheadCost, card spending, and the unfilmed weeks

Where YNAB wins: irregular bills stop being ambushes, and that is worth the subscription.

Read the comparison

The method, and this siteThe full explainer →

01The method

What kakeibo actually is

Kakeibo (家計簿) means household ledger, and it is a practice rather than a formula. Hani Motoko published the first one in 1904 in the household magazine she edited, written to give women a documented record of work they were already doing without recognition. It is a practical invention from the early twentieth century, not an ancient secret, and the history is told properly rather than exotically.

First published1904

In Katei no Tomo, the household magazine she edited with her husband Hani Yoshikazu. It was renamed Fujin no Tomoin 1908, which is why so much English writing dates the ledger to a title that did not exist yet. The history →

The shape of it is small enough to state completely. Before the month begins you write down your income and take your savings out of it first, so the promise is kept by arithmetic instead of by willpower. What is left is divided across four envelopes: Survival, Optional, Culture and Extra. Through the month you record what you spend, by hand, at the moment you spend it. At the end of the month you answer four questions in writing, and you keep the answers.

The four questionsAnswered in writing

01How much money do you have?Everything arriving this month, counted before anything is committed.
02How much would you like to save?Decided now and moved out first, before a single envelope is filled.
03How much are you spending?Recorded by hand, in four envelopes, at the moment of spending.
04How can you improve?Answered at the end, in sentences, against the numbers rather than a feeling.

The four questions in full →

Notice what the method does not contain. There are no percentages in it, and any page that tells you kakeibo prescribes a fifty or thirty split has invented them. What it prescribes is an order of operations. The shares suggested on this site are labelled as our suggestion for a blank ledger everywhere they appear, and every calculator lets you move them.

On what
the method
does not contain

There are no percentages in it. What it prescribes is an order of operations.

02The arithmetic

Client side. Nothing is submitted and nothing is stored.

Why the arithmetic is the product here

Because almost every English page on this subject is the same prose explainer of the same length repeating the same four categories, and none of them will do the division with you. So this site was built the other way round: calculators that run in your browser, 294 savings targets worked out in three currencies, 130 everyday expenses sorted into the four envelopes, and a guide for every place people get stuck. The reading is there when you want it, and never in front of the number you came for.

The calculators are client side, which is not a technical footnote. It means your income, your rent and your balance are used by a few kilobytes of JavaScript on the page and then discarded when you close the tab. Nothing is submitted and nothing is stored, and every one of them keeps working with the network switched off once the page has loaded, which is the simplest proof of the claim.

03The rules

The rules this site publishes under

No unsourced statistics. The claim that kakeibo saves 20 to 35 percent circulates across this entire niche and we could not trace it to a primary source, so we do not repeat it, and we say so on the pages where the temptation would be strongest. If you can point us at the original, we will publish it and credit you: the contact page exists partly for that.

No invented testimonials and no download counts. Every count in this copy is computed at build time from the file it describes, so a page here cannot claim a library larger than the one it has. And where another method beats kakeibo at a specific job, the comparison pages say so in the body rather than in a footnote, because a comparison in which our own subject wins every category is an advertisement.

Nothing on this site is gated. There is no email wall, no account, and no calculator that asks for an address before it will divide. More on all of this, including who publishes it, is on the about page.

The appiPhone and iPad

The ledger, kept between reflections

Everything above works without it. The method needs the entry to happen at the counter rather than from memory on Sunday night, and that is the one job the app exists to do.

01 · Four envelopes

The method, not a category tree

Every expense goes into Survival, Optional, Culture or Extra, the way the ledger has worked since 1904.

02 · Safe to spend

What today can cost

Income minus commitments minus your promise, divided by the days that are left, kept current as you record.

03 · Goals

A target with a date on it

Set the amount and the deadline and the monthly figure follows, with the running total held against it.

04 · Reflection

The four questions at month end

Asked in writing and kept afterwards, so a year of months becomes something you can actually read back.

The Kakeibo app home screen showing net worth, accounts and progress through the month

The home screen, day one

Get the Kakeibo app freeFree on iPhone and iPad with ads: one savings goal, ten envelopes and twenty five transactions a month. Pro removes the ads and the limits.

In preparationWhat a template needs →

The printable kakeibo pack, drawn page by page

Five pages doing five separate jobs, ruled the way a working ledger is ruled. Here is every one of them as it will print, before a single file exists.

The pack, as it will printBeing drawn

01The monthly plan pageIncome, then the promise, then the four envelopes
02Daily entry pagesDate, what it was, amount, envelope
03The weekly check lineYour guess first, then the actual
04The monthly reckoningPlanned against actual, envelope by envelope
05The four questionsRuled room to answer in writing

When it lands

The method, in full

Four categories, four questions, one honest month

One promise, made first

The saving is decided before the spending, and it leaves on payday, ahead of every envelope.

Four categories

Survival
Rent, food, power, transport, insurance.
Optional
Enjoyable and stoppable, and not a naughty list.
Culture
Books, courses, exhibitions, anything that improves you.
Extra
Repairs, gifts, the vet, the surprise not had yet.

Four questions, when the month ends

01How much money do you have?
02How much would you like to save?
03How much are you spending?
04How can you improve?

Start by measuring a normal month and changing nothing.

Every category, calculator and worked target here is free, ungated and running in your browser. The reading is there when you want it.

Read the method Open a calculator

Everything on this site is free · No account, no email wallThe same four envelopes, on iPhone and iPad →