Every Dave Ramsey Dollar Helps Shape Your Budget and Meet Your Financial Goals
Many people find that Dave Ramsey’s approach to personal finance “Total Money Makeover” helps them control their money. EveryDollar is Ramsey’s new free budgeting and financial goals tracking tool.
Of course, budgeting isn’t that hard, and we’ve even published Ramsey’s own free guide to this in the past. But there are more than a few approaches to budgeting and a few tools you can use. EveryDollar is one of the simplest and most straightforward I’ve ever seen, not to mention pleasing to the eye.
The main categories are already selected for you, and when you distribute your income, you can see how much you have left in the budget. This follows the “zero sum” philosophy (or “give every dollar a name”). Click the arrow to move to the next month and your budget amounts will be copied conveniently.
Part of the Baby Steps tool tracks your progress along Ramsey’s 7 Steps, from saving $ 1,000 for your emergency fund and snowballing debt to paying off your home and leaving an inheritance.
While EveryDollar is free, you need EveryDollar Plus, which costs $ 99 per year, to actually keep track of your budget and connect your financial accounts. With Plus, you can drag and drop to match transactions to your budget categories, but if you’re a Mint user, you probably won’t need to. However, the budgeting tool is handy (and can help you figure out the best budget for use in other programs).