Our Mission

What BudgetCast is for, and why it exists

BudgetCast exists to give everyone clarity over their financial future — not just the wealthy or the financially savvy.

Know exactly what's coming.

Money is stressful because it feels uncertain. BudgetCast removes that uncertainty. Every period in your budget is deliberate. Every change is recorded. Nothing disappears silently. When life changes — a pay rise, a new bill, a period off work — BudgetCast keeps the full picture intact so you always know where you stand.

Inspired by the work of Martin Lewis and MoneySavingExpert, we believe the people who need budgeting most are the ones who can least afford to be locked out of it. The MSE budget planner has helped millions of UK households get a grip on their finances — but a spreadsheet is a snapshot. BudgetCast is what happens when you make that spreadsheet live: recurrence, history, and a forecast that stays accurate as life changes.

Why this exists — from the person who built it

I built BudgetCast because I've watched every tool I trusted eventually stop working.

Married in 2000, in the Forces. Child in 2003. Separated in 2004, still serving. Left the Forces in 2006 and bought a house with a new partner that same year.

We separated in 2008. I bought them out in 2009.

2010: IVA. The kind where you're learning to hold everything together on a plan, month by month, knowing one mistake costs you years.

I used MS Money. It worked — until it didn't. Spreadsheets after that. Then a mobile app. Then back to online services. Every time I switched, the same problem: none of them reflected how I actually lived.

2013: new job, no company car. 2014: another job that needed one. So I financed a car. While under an IVA. Most tools treat that as two separate problems. For me it was one problem with two moving parts.

2016: IVA finished. 2017: new job. 2019: combined pensions. Started a LISA the same year. Then in 2025 — after years of seeing salary sacrifice options buried in payroll — I finally understood what they actually meant for the numbers.

And every step of the way, I was fighting with tools that wanted me to pay for more than 10 categories to see the full picture. As if real life fits into 10 neat boxes.

The problem isn't that these tools are bad. It's that they were built for people whose finances are simple. One income. One account. Maybe a mortgage. Problems that come separately, in order, with time to think.

Real life isn't like that. Real life is holding an IVA and a car finance and a salary sacrifice and a pension and a LISA at the same time. It's knowing you have to see all of it together or you don't actually know where you stand.

Most budgeting apps lock the real tools behind a paywall. Want more than 10 categories? Subscribe. Want history so you can see what changed? Premium only. Want to share a snapshot with your adviser or your ex's solicitor? Upgrade.

We think that's backwards. The people who need budgeting most — people juggling complexity, managing debt, navigating life changes — are the ones least able to pay for visibility into their own money.

I want to build something for people like I was. Still am, in some ways. People who need to know the full picture and need to trust it's real.

— David, founder

What's free. What's Premium. And why.

Anyone should be able to produce a complete personal or household budget on BudgetCast without paying a penny. That's not a trial, a teaser, or a reduced version — it's the product.

Free — the full planning tool

  • Multiple budgets (e.g. personal + household)
  • Full recurrence scheduling — weekly, monthly, yearly, and more
  • Period history and change tracking
  • Budget forecast — projects income and expenditure forward
  • Transfers between your own budgets
  • No category limit
  • Shareable read-only links — for debt advisers, IFAs, mortgage brokers, hardship teams
  • Everything needed to plan, maintain, and share a complete budget

Premium — automation and depth

  • Multi-user shared budgets — invite others with their own login
  • Open Banking / bank sync — automatic transaction import (UK)
  • Forecast accuracy scoring — "How close were you?"
  • Advanced reconciliation and reporting
  • Export — CSV and JSON

Premium pays for automation, depth of analysis, and household collaboration — not for the right to see your own finances.

Shareable snapshots — the feature most likely to be needed by users in financial difficulty — are free. Cash-based users, under-18s, and anyone outside the UK Open Banking perimeter get the full budgeting loop at no cost. No artificial ceiling on what you're allowed to see about your own money.

How we build it

A few things we hold to, consistently:

  • No dark patterns. No streaks, no loss-aversion nudges, no "act now" pressure, no social comparison. The retention strategy is the product working.
  • Nothing disappears silently. Every change is recorded. Every period is preserved. When things shift, the full picture is intact and auditable.
  • The hard states matter most. An empty account. A negative forecast. A snapshot being sent to a debt adviser. These screens get disproportionate care. If the product earns trust anywhere, it earns it there.
  • Specific, not cheerful. "Groceries are tracking £40 below last month" is more useful than "Great job!" Generic encouragement is hollow. Let the numbers speak.
  • Financial difficulty is a situation, not an identity. The product assumes the user is a human being navigating a hard situation — not a problem to be managed.

Questions? Contact us at hello@budgetcast.co.uk.