How Simplify Budget Helped me to be Financially Independent

Over the past 2 years I've been living off the grid with no job, just my investments. I needed something that keeps me grounded to achieve a life without being tied to a job that requires me to be somewhere at a specific time.

Meet simplifybudget.com - an app built for people who seek to achieve financial independence! Here's the live demo you can open to see it in action: https://simplifybudget.com/demo

The financial management strategy I built in the app helped me achieve this goal. I was able to travel to more than 25 countries and still have a comfortable emergency fund and investments.

Let me tell you how I was able to achieve it and what strategy I used:

• I track my expenses manually. No bank connections, just intentional tracking of where my money goes. I built a visual grid system where I can see the dates and categories, which helps me understand my spending patterns better.
• For subscriptions and other fixed expenses, I built a system that puts those transactions automatically on the calendar so I just focus on the variable expenses.
• I track my income and use it against my expenses to see how much money I saved. My income is whatever I sell from my investments.
• I also built a net worth tracker that focuses on what I have and what I owe in 4 buckets:
  • Liquid Assets (the money I have on demand to spend and my savings)
  • Investments (all money in investment accounts and assets I consider investments)
  • Physical assets (estimated value of everything I own)
  • Debts (thank goodness I haven't had to put anything there other than donation goals, which I consider a debt)

At the end of every month, I enter what I have so I know over time how my wealth grows or declines. This helps me tremendously stay on track. Sometimes I update the tracker mid-month to see where I am, but ultimately the last entry of the month makes it to the record.

I use just 30 categories and nothing else, so I don't get lost in the details of what I want to achieve.

I started this as a spreadsheet, but since Google offers Apps Script where you can build an app that interacts with spreadsheets, I turned it into an app. The best part is I use this as a family, because multiple people can write into the same spreadsheet.

I've been using this system for well over 2 years and I'm confident that it works. I just have to tell the story to help more people.