About twenty minutes end to end. If you're coming from YNAB, skip this and import instead — you'll get your history and categories in one step.
1. Add your accounts
Start with the accounts you actually spend from: checking, savings, credit cards. Add loans and investments later — they don't affect budgeting.
Either connect a bank or add accounts manually with their current balance.
Check each type. It drives the arithmetic:
| Type | Effect |
|---|---|
| Checking / savings / cash | On-budget — funds your categories |
| Credit card | The reserve model applies |
| Loan / mortgage | Off-budget — tracked, gets a payment category |
| Investment / other | Off-budget — net worth only |
A credit card typed as checking would add its balance to the money you think you have, so this is worth thirty seconds.
2. Look at Ready to Assign
Open Budget. Ready to Assign should equal the total of your on-budget cash accounts, because nothing has a job yet.
If it doesn't match, an account type or its on-budget setting is wrong. Fix that before going on — see Ready to Assign.
3. Build your categories
Earmarkr seeds a starter set. Adjust it to your life rather than adopting it wholesale — the best category list is the one that matches decisions you actually make.
A workable starting shape:
- Bills — rent or mortgage, utilities, phone, insurance, subscriptions
- Everyday — groceries, fuel, transport, household
- Occasional — car maintenance, medical, gifts, clothing
- Savings — emergency fund, and anything you're saving toward
- Fun — dining out, hobbies, entertainment
Two rules of thumb:
Start coarse. One "Groceries" beats separate produce, pantry, and household lines. Split later if a category is genuinely hiding a decision.
Make a category for the things that blow up budgets — car repairs, medical bills, annual renewals. They're not emergencies, they're just infrequent. A little each month makes them boring.
Manage all this under Manage categories.
4. Assign your money
Click each category's Assigned cell and enter an amount. Suggested order:
- Bills with a due date this month — rent, utilities, minimums.
- Everyday spending — groceries, fuel.
- Occasional things — a twelfth of an annual bill.
- Debt beyond the minimums — see the debt payoff plan.
- Everything else — savings and fun.
Keep going until Ready to Assign reads $0.00.
If you run out before covering everything, that's information — you've just found out your commitments exceed your cash. Better now than on the 28th.
Handy: the amount box does arithmetic. Type 1200/12 for a monthly twelfth of an annual bill.
5. Set goals for the irregular ones
For anything not monthly — insurance, car registration, holidays — set a goal. Earmarkr works out what to set aside each month and shows what's still needed.
This is the highest-leverage step. Irregular bills are what break budgets.
6. Use it for a week
Categorize as transactions arrive. Categorize a payee once and a rule remembers it, so it gets quieter fast.
Two habits worth forming:
Check before you spend. Look at the category. That's the entire discipline.
Move money instead of ignoring it. Overspent Dining Out? Move it from somewhere. Takes ten seconds and keeps the numbers honest.
7. Reconcile at month end
When statements arrive, reconcile each account. It confirms Earmarkr matches your bank, and it's how you catch a missed or duplicated transaction before it quietly distorts everything.
What to expect
Month one feels awkward and your estimates will be wrong. Fine — you're gathering data.
Month two is better, because now you know what you actually spend.
Month three is usually where it clicks.
The one thing that predicts success is categorizing transactions regularly. Everything else is detail.