Choosing between methods
Kakeibo, compared honestly
We make a kakeibo app, so treat the following with the appropriate suspicion and then read it anyway: some of the alternatives below are better than kakeibo at specific jobs, and every comparison names the job the alternative does better.
Which comparison do you need?
Two questions get asked about kakeibo, and they want different pages. One is about the shape of an allocation. The other is about which tool to keep.
01If the question is what proportion of your pay should go where
Ledger against ratio
Kakeibo vs the 50/30/20 rule
50/30/20Three shares, fixed by the rule
- Needs $2,000 50%
- Wants $1,200 30%
- Savings $800 20%
KakeiboThe promise you chose, then four envelopes
- Promise $600 15%
- Survival $1,700 42.5%
- Optional $1,020 25.5%
- Culture $340 8.5%
- Extra $340 8.5%
A practice with a monthly review against a fixed allocation you can adopt in thirty seconds. Includes a calculator that runs both on one income, and an honest verdict about when the rule is the better answer.
Where the rule winsIt is faster, it is easier to run jointly, and it sets the savings figure for you.
Read the comparison02If you are choosing between an app, a cash system and a notebook
Four methods
Kakeibo vs YNAB, envelopes and cash stuffing
KakeiboFree, a notebook
YNABA subscription
EnvelopesCash only
Cash stuffingCash, filmed
- A block is a moment the method asks something of you
- Each red tick is one kakeibo entry, written at the counter
- A dashed run is background work, or a month left to itself
Software that plans forward, physical cash that enforces limits, the social media version of both, and a 1904 ledger that teaches you your own spending. Where each one genuinely wins.
Where YNAB winsIrregular bills stop being ambushes, and that is worth the subscription.
Read the comparisonOnce the method is settled
Kakeibo against whatever you are keeping it in
Same method, three different places to put it. Each of these names the job the alternative genuinely does better before it makes any case for ours.
If you already live in a spreadsheet
Kakeibo vs a spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is better at arithmetic, history and anything you want to slice. It is worse at the two seconds after you pay, which is where the method does its work.
Where the spreadsheet winsIt totals, charts and keeps years of history for nothing, and it never asks you to trust anyone else with the file.
Read the comparisonIf you would rather write it down by hand
Kakeibo vs a paper notebook
Kakeibo was written for paper, and paper still wins on attention. What it loses on is being at home at the moment you spend, and the arithmetic you have to do yourself.
Where paper winsNothing interrupts it, nothing expires, and writing slowly is the point rather than a cost.
Read the comparisonIf you are deciding whether to let an app read your accounts
Kakeibo vs an app that connects to your bank
Automatic import solves completeness. Kakeibo solves attention. They are not the same problem, and the honest comparison is about which of the two you actually have.
Where automatic import winsIt catches what you forgot, it never needs you to remember, and it makes a full picture of accounts you rarely open.
Read the comparisonof comparing
How we compare things here
Every method on these pages works for somebody, and none of them creates money. So the comparisons are written around a single question: which problem do you have. Not knowing where the money goes is a different problem from being ambushed by irregular bills, and it wants a different tool.
Where an alternative is genuinely better at something, we say so on the page rather than in a footnote.
these pages
are written to
A comparison that concludes our own subject wins every category is an advertisement, and it is also useless to the person reading it.
reading
If you would rather start with numbers, every calculator is on one page, including the side by side allocator that runs kakeibo and 50/30/20 on the same income. The method itself is in what is kakeibo.
Whichever method you land on, the entries decide it
Kakeibo is the one that makes you write the month down and read it back. If that is the part you have been missing, the app is built around it.
