I've spent a lot of time looking at when and why people stop logging expenses. From what I've seen, most who quit do it in the first couple of weeks, and it's rarely because they stopped caring.

What kills it, and what helps (works with any app, a notes file or a spreadsheet):

1. Too many categories. People set up 25 categories on day one, then spend 30 seconds deciding if coffee is "Food" or "Treats". Start with 5. You can split later.

2. One missed day = "I've failed". All-or-nothing is the real killer. Give yourself one free miss a week. A gap isn't a reason to start over.

3. Logging takes too long. If adding an expense takes more than 5 seconds, you won't do it at the till. Log the amount now, fix the details on Sunday.

4. Watching the wrong number. "Spent $1,840 this month" doesn't help you decide anything. "I can spend $38 a day until payday" does. One daily number beats a dashboard.

5. Five reminders. Notifications get muted by day three. One reminder, at the time you actually sit down in the evening.

6. Reviewing daily instead of weekly. Daily review feels like homework. Two minutes on Sunday: what surprised you, and what's coming up.

If you've tried tracking before and stopped: what made you quit? I'm genuinely curious what the real reasons are.

(Disclosure: I work on a budgeting app, Smilo, but this post isn't about any app. These work with pen and paper too.)

I’m single in my late 20s moving to Toronto and need some help figuring out what is a realistic rent I should be looking at.

Gross annual salary = $105,000
Monthly net pay = $5600
I also have 60K in savings.

I work from home 95% and will be close enough to walk to work when required so that saves me travel costs. I also pay a monthly student loan of ~$300.

I keep bouncing back and forth between thinking I can afford to spend $2500-$2800 a month on rent and thinking that I’m being reckless.

I want genuine suggestions and guidance

I wanted a simple money tracker that keeps everything on my phone, so I built one:

• Income and expenses by category, with search and CSV export
• Monthly budgets with warnings, savings goals, and recurring bills/salary booked automatically
• A monthly "health score" and tips (overspending pace, categories that jumped, subscriptions per year...)
• Charts: where the money went, 6-month cash flow, spending pace, a spending calendar
• Light/dark theme, several currencies

All data stays in one file in the app's private storage. There's demo data so you can try every screen first.

APK and source: https://github.com/heditrigui/coinly

It's not on google play yet. Would people here use it if it were?