Earmarkr is a zero-based budget. You decide in advance what every dollar you have is for, until nothing is left unassigned.
If you've used YNAB, this will be familiar — the method is the same. What's different is that every number shows its arithmetic, and credit cards and debt payoff are built in rather than bolted on.
The four ideas
1. Budget the money you have, not the money you expect
You only assign dollars that are actually in your accounts right now. No projecting next month's paycheque, no budgeting against income that hasn't landed.
This is what makes the numbers trustworthy: a funded category means the money is genuinely there.
2. Every dollar gets a job
Money sitting in Ready to Assign has no job yet. You assign it — rent, groceries, insurance, debt — until Ready to Assign is $0.00.
Nothing moves at your bank. You're labelling what's already there.
3. When plans change, move money
You'll overspend a category. Everyone does. The response isn't to feel bad — it's to move money from another category to cover it.
That's not failing at budgeting, that's what budgeting is: deciding what matters more, with real numbers, before the money is gone.
4. Old money pays new bills
Do this for a while and you're spending money you earned last month rather than money arriving on Friday. That's the point at which a budget stops feeling like a constraint.
The Age of Money figure on your home screen tracks it.
What makes Earmarkr different
Every number shows its math. Click any figure and see the arithmetic. Ready to Assign is your on-budget cash minus everything you've assigned — and you can check that yourself. No number is asserted without a derivation.
Credit cards actually make sense. Spend on a card from a funded category and that money moves into the card's payment category — genuinely set aside. Spend beyond what you budgeted and the excess is tracked as debt rather than pretending you had the cash. You can read every movement in a ledger. This is how credit cards work, and it's the single most common thing people find confusing elsewhere.
Debt payoff is funded, not hypothetical. The payoff plan's extra payment is a real budget category you assign money to — not a calculator's guess about spare cash you may or may not have.
The screens
| Screen | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Budget | Assign money and see every category's balance. Where you'll spend most of your time |
| Transactions | Your accounts and their activity. Categorize, reconcile, import |
| Cards | Card reserves, gaps, and the payment ledger |
| Debt | Payoff strategy, projections, and this month's target |
| Reports | Spending, net worth, trends |
Where to go next
- Coming from YNAB? Import your budget — it reconciles to the cent.
- Starting fresh? Set up your first budget.
- Want to understand the headline number? Ready to Assign.