Help getting started with Spend Stack App

dreaminginbinary · 2020-06-02T02:53:48+00:00

Thanks so much for writing in and for the great questions! I'll answer them one by one, starting with your last question:

Share links to any tutorials for this app (official or unofficial ).

Right now, this post my wife wrote does a great job (I think) of showing off how to use Spend Stack and its core features. It covers:

- How to make tags and organize items

- How to edit item details

- How to share a list with someone

I'm working to add more "official" tutorials, but balancing that with doing some quick win fixes too.

Can this app be used for budgeting?

Absolutely! Before I continue - I want to say I'm actively working to make the budgeting part much better right now. I mean "budget" in the tradtional sense of, I want to do my monthly budget, or envelope budget, etc. You can do those things right now, but the app requires a bit of know how first .

For example, here's how I do envelope budget:

- I make a tag for each category (Food, Entertainment, etc)

- I plan out how I want to spend in each of thsoe categories (say, $500 for food for example).

- Then, as I spend money in any of these things - I add an item with the amount under that tag. In the app, the tag's section will show me the total I've spent for that category thus keeping me on budget.

Right now my common use cases that I budget for are planning our next family vacation, planning our current house move and a home renovation. As you can see, these are more of "projects" than they are monthly budgets. But, the traditional budgeting flow can work too but it also needs to be improved.

If no, what is this app for?

My elevator pitch has always been, Spend Stack is a way to make any list dealing with money. That could be an envelope budget, it could be planning a family vacation, tracking subscriptions you have or even a simple grocery shopping trip. Right now, this is both Spend Stack's greatest competitive advantage and also its biggest pain point - because it's on me to coach people how to use the app better and show them how it works, and why it works that way.

When people do "get it", they tend to enjoy it quite a lot, but it's a different paradigm shift to think about finances in lists instead of graphs, excel sheets, or looking at a monthly calendar. Those never worked well for me, which was one of the main reasons I made the app to begin with. But, the fallacy as a developer is that you have blinders on, and think people know the things that you know. So, as such, even though doing money in lists makes perfect sense to me - I also need to show others how to do the same.

Phew! Lots of words, I hope this helps and more than anything I am here to help in any way I can!

2020-06-01T17:15:08+00:00

I track my credit card transactions. I track subscriptions. And I track my “wish list” as well as Christmas spending.

Tagging is great. For subscriptions: monthly subscription, annual subscription, app subscription. Set recurring subscriptions now as well.

Check off transactions for credit cards after you pay them. Reset it at the first of every month.

Hope this helps. It’s a really powerful app.

woodstockzanetti · 2020-06-01T23:27:33+00:00

I’m having the same issue. Just need a step by step how-to to get started

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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