Guides

An honest side-by-side of FireBudget and YNAB: what works the same, what is different, what FireBudget lacks, and who should stay on YNAB.

Budget apps you can buy once instead of subscribing, compared honestly: what YNAB costs over five years, and the real one-time and free options in 2026.

Actual Budget is excellent and free, but sync needs a server. Here is when that is worth it, when the desktop app alone is enough, and where FireBudget fits.

Where your budget actually lives in YNAB, Monarch, Actual Budget, and FireBudget, what leaves your Mac, and how to back up a local budget properly.

A short, honest roundup of zero-based and envelope budgeting apps that run on a Mac in 2026, with price model, where data lives, and who each one suits.

Step by step: export your plan from YNAB, import it into FireBudget, and check the result. Includes exactly what comes across and what does not.

Life after YNAB on a desktop budget app. The habits that carry over, the ones that do not, and practical ways to cope without a phone app or bank sync.

A practical guide to bank CSV files for budgeting: columns, date formats, signs, and avoiding duplicates, with step-by-step instructions for FireBudget.

How to budget in ringgit, Singapore dollars, euros, or any ISO currency on a Mac, and how to handle more than one currency without a conversion feature.

Use Claude Code to read a PDF bank statement and import it into your budget, with a dry-run preview, duplicate checks, and nothing written until you agree.

Let Claude Code or Codex reconcile your credit card against the statement's closing balance. FireBudget checks the math and locks nothing unless it matches exactly.

What an MCP server in a budgeting app lets an AI agent do, the exact tools FireBudget exposes, and how the local-only privacy model works.

Connect OpenAI Codex to FireBudget and have it categorize a month of transactions from your own payee history, with a before-and-after preview of every change.

How FireBudget estimates monthly interest on a mortgage or car loan, why it keeps your loan balance and net worth honest, and how to correct it from a statement.

Plan next month before it starts. How a multi-month budget view works, how a change in one month flows into the next, and quick ways to fill in future months.

How scheduled transactions cover the predictable half of your spending when you do not use bank sync, and how to set up, edit, skip, and stop them in FireBudget.

In a zero-based budget, you budget the spending, not the card payment. How card purchases, payments as transfers, refunds, and existing debt work, step by step.