What is Zero-based budgeting?
A budget where you give every dollar of income a job, like rent, groceries or savings, until there's nothing left to assign.
Zero-based budgeting is a way of planning money where your income minus everything you assign equals zero. Every dollar gets a job before the month starts: bills, groceries, fun money, savings, debt. If $50 is left over, you give it a job too.
An example
Say $4,000 comes in this month. You assign $1,600 to rent, $500 to groceries, $300 to bills, $200 to fun money, $400 to an emergency fund and $1,000 to paying off a card. That’s $4,000 assigned, and $0 waiting for a plan. Overspend on groceries? Move money from fun money to cover it.
Why people like it
It makes trade-offs visible. You decide where money goes before it’s spent, rather than wondering where it went afterward. It also works well with uneven income, because you only budget money you actually have. See Budgeting on an uneven income.
In Kibble
Kibble is a zero-based budget. Money lands in Ready to Assign, and you give it out to categories until that reads zero. See Set up your first budget, or start with our free zero-based budget spreadsheet.
Questions people ask
Does zero-based mean I spend everything?
No. Savings and debt payments count as jobs too. "Zero" means zero dollars without a plan, not zero dollars in the bank.
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