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The 10% Pledge was an easy sell for me. I took it pretty soon after learning about it, because it just intuitively made sense. I had been looking for a way to help combat the dramatic wealth and resource inequality in the world, and my primary blocker was not knowing a) how much to donate and b) if donating would even help. Finding out that there was a body of research on effective giving was gamechanging. I now felt confident my donations were concretely making a difference – which in turn made me want to give more. And while 10% was somewhat arbitrary, I was compelled by the reasoning behind it, and figured it was a no-brainer place to start my giving. After all, I was working in the private sector at that time, and wouldn’t have had any qualms about taking a more impactful job that paid 10% less – in fact, I would have jumped at the chance – so I wasn’t at all worried about the personal implications of sending 10% of my income to projects doing impactful work. 

All that said, I come from a somewhat different financial place than many of the people I know. While I’ve never made a lot of money, I’ve also never had to worry about student debt or lack of financial security. There’s some generational wealth in my family which means my schooling was covered, much of the money my husband and I used for our down payment was inherited, and familial financial support would likely be available should I end up in dire straits. 

So I was confident we could afford 10% – I didn’t have to do any in-depth budgeting or projections to figure that out. 

But even though most salary-earning people in high-income countries are comparatively well-off– usually in at least the top 5% of income earners worldwide (and with access to common goods like clean water, medical care, a social safety net, etc.) – many may not be confident they can meet their expenses on 10% less without actually sitting down and calculating what’s coming in and what’s going out. And I’ve heard that the “admin burden” of doing this can be a big blocker when it comes to pledging, even if you’re motivated to take the plunge and you understand your relative privilege in relation to others in the world. 

I can also relate to this. The downside of being confident that I can afford 10% without having to do any calculations is that I’m not sure how much more than 10% I can realistically afford to give. And if I can afford to give more, I’d like to. What’s holding me back is purely the ugh factor of having to get on top of my finances and figure out how much extra $ I actually have at my disposal on a monthly basis. 

I’ve tried Mint (big fail), I’ve tried spreadsheets (also primarily unsuccessful) and I’ve tried tracking how much I spend on eating out/takeout (likely my biggest vice) to at least start getting a sense of how much frivolous spending I do on a monthly basis and how much I could try cutting that back. But I’m still left with the overall feeling that it would be useful – even though I know I can afford 10% – to have a better sense of what I’m spending, how much cushion I should realistically leave, etc.

So since it's Pledge Highlight Week on the forum, I’d love to open up a discussion about tools & tips for getting over the hump. Are there apps that you find particularly helpful? Are there time-budgeting strategies that help you prioritise financial planning? Do you resonate with the admin burden of figuring out what you can afford and if so – how has it affected your decision to take (or not yet take) a Pledge? (I’ll also leave my only budget app success story in the "answers" section.)

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I have found rocket money to be quite helpful!

I simply used a classical Excel spreadsheet. Honestly, even a physical notebook is okay. I don't think any particular app will be so convenient that it all of a sudden makes you go through with it when it didn't work before. The most important thing is to establish noting your expenses down as a habit. So e.g. every evening after dinner, you sit down and write down all your expenses of the day, plus check your bank account for any expenses. 1-2 months can already be enough as long as you are aware of the yearly peaks to have a general overview.

For visualization, creating a Sankey diagram helps a lot, which can be done on dozens of websites. When seeing such a diagram, you get a pretty good idea of how your expenses are distributed and if some area might need some cutting down, plus seeing how big the cut from donations actually is from your budget.

My only budget app success story – but to be honest, I haven’t been great about remembering to always input my spending: Goodbudget. However, it seems possible to make using this a habit, which is more than I can say for the other apps I’ve tried.

What I like (though my particular case might cause me to celebrate different features than others would!)

-The free version suffices – no need to pay for premium, at least for what I’m looking for

-I can share the app with my husband (we have shared expenses) and this doesn’t require any syncing between accounts (which often doesn’t work, at least for me with my very old Android!) To share, you simply both log in with the same username and password.

-I don’t have to sync my bank account, bank cards, etc. I can instead manually add an entry every time I buy food/order takeout. I prefer this because a) syncing often doesn’t seem to work well for me, and if it does, the categorisation doesn’t work so I then have to go through and recategorise everything after the fact which just adds to the admin burden! b) the act of physically inputting what I’ve spent seems to hold me accountable/act as a mild deterrent to excessive eating out

-I could imagine adding other “envelopes” to track other spending categories once I’ve got this one down  – the app seems to work fairly smoothly and it’s quick and easy to add my transactions. 

Quick thought: Monzo pots function similar to the envelope thing you mentioned - https://monzo.com/pots. When your salary comes in, you could use the salary sorter ( https://monzo.com/salary-sorter/ , split it in the app across bills, savings, spending, subscriptions, donations etc. If the next month there's consistently lots left in eg. the bills or spending pot that hasn't been used, that might be a sign to consider changing the proportions. The categories might also be useful for tracking spending - if you're not on the free version then you can edit th... (read more)

+1, I do all my budgeting in Monzo and I find it to be really good. In addition to these features I find the budgeting by category very useful, and the fact that it doesn't require copying the data out to somewhere else makes it much easier to stick to.

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