01 · Bucket budgeting3 buckets
Bucket budgeting, for two.
Split your money into a few buckets with clear jobs, and the endless “can we afford this?” conversation turns into a quick look at one number. It works even better with two people — as long as you both know what’s in each bucket.
Early access — join the waitlist.
02 · The method3 jobs
Three buckets, three jobs.
Everyday
The money that goes out this month — rent, groceries, petrol, the fun stuff. Most bucket systems put the bulk of your pay here and keep it deliberately simple, because this is the bucket you actually have to think about.
Safety
A buffer that exists to be boring. Enough set aside that a dead car battery or a slow month is an annoyance rather than an event. You are not trying to grow this one; you are trying to not touch it.
Long-term
What you’re actually building towards — the deposit, the trip, the debt you want gone. This is the bucket that makes the other two feel worth the bother.
The exact number of buckets matters far less than the habit. Two people who both know what each bucket is for will beat a perfect ten-bucket structure that only one of you maintains.
03 · In SteadShared
What that looks like here.
Your buckets are accounts and categories. Everyday spending lands in the categories you set up; the safety buffer and the long-term goals are goals you can watch fill. Link with your partner and you both see the same buckets — with each item shared or not, as you choose, going forward.
That last part is the bit most shared budgets get wrong. Linking accounts in Stead doesn’t hand over your history: every account starts unshared, sharing is forward-only, and either of you can unlink at any time, which resets it completely.
04 · The trade-off0 bank feeds
You type it in. That’s the deal.
Stead has no bank feeds. You type it in, on purpose. That means about thirty seconds of typing, twice a day, and it means the app can never quietly mis-file a transaction into the wrong bucket while you weren’t looking.
It also means your bank credentials never sit in our database, because we’ll never ask for your bank password. If typing it in isn’t for you, that’s a completely legitimate reason to use something else — plenty of good apps sell the opposite promise.
05 · Fair comparison2 answers
Why not a spreadsheet? Why not YNAB?
A spreadsheet
Genuinely works, and plenty of people run buckets brilliantly in one. Stead exists for the couple where one of you loves the spreadsheet and the other never opens it — the same habit, with a UI built for two people who don’t have the same relationship with a formula bar, plus sharing controls and a shared view neither of you has to maintain by hand.
YNAB
A genuinely good product with a devoted following, and if zero-based budgeting with bank sync suits you, it does things Stead doesn’t — bank feeds included. Stead is built on a different bet: that budgeting sticks when it’s private and when it’s a bit of fun. There’s nothing to connect and nothing tracking you, and the two of you build streaks and a character that grows as you go. Less admin, more momentum.
06 · Where the idea comes from
Not our idea, and we don’t pretend it is.
Dividing your money by job is an old idea that plenty of people have taught well. In Australia, it’s the same bucket-based thinking a lot of people will know from Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor. Stead isn’t a companion to any particular book — it’s a place to track buckets, whichever version of the idea you picked up and however you’ve since bent it to fit your life.
Just you for now? Perfectly fine. Buckets work on your own, and you can add a partner whenever you’re ready — or never.
Start with one bucket.
Early access — join the waitlist.
Want the whole picture first? Read Stead for couples or what it costs.
Stead is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Scott Pape or Barefoot Investor Pty Ltd.