The Spreadsheet I Replaced With a Web App (And Almost Went Back)

For three years, I managed my budget in a Google Sheet.

Not a fancy template — just a plain grid I built myself. One tab for income, one for expenses, a SUM formula at the bottom, and a cell I'd turn red when I overspent. Ugly. Functional. Mine.

I knew every row. I added entries by hand, every transaction, every coffee. The friction was the point. Typing "$4.50 — coffee — Tuesday" meant I felt that $4.50 instead of watching it vanish into a synced ledger somewhere.

Then I built Monee.

Why I Even Built It

The spreadsheet had limits. It didn't work well on mobile. Sharing it with my partner meant version conflicts. And every month I'd copy-paste the same boilerplate into a new sheet.

So I spent a weekend writing a web app. Clean UI, localStorage only, no accounts, no backend. It did exactly what the spreadsheet did — minus the formatting hassle.

I was proud of it. I switched over immediately.

The Honeymoon Phase

The first two weeks were great.

The app loaded fast. The mobile experience was actually decent. Adding a transaction was one tap, a few keystrokes. I could see my budget at a glance without scrolling through rows.

I told myself: this is the upgrade I needed.

The Moment of Doubt

About three weeks in, I almost went back.

It wasn't a bug. The app worked fine. It was something subtler — I realized I was adding transactions faster, and that felt wrong.

With the spreadsheet, opening it on my laptop was a small ritual. I'd sit down, find the right row, type carefully. Each entry was deliberate. I noticed each one.

With the app? I'd tap, type, done. Thirty seconds. Effortless.

And somehow, effortless felt like cheating.

I wasn't more aware of my spending — I was just logging it more efficiently. The friction I'd thought was a bug in the spreadsheet turned out to be a feature.

What Made Me Stay

I stayed for one reason: I made the app keep the friction that mattered.

No autocomplete on transaction names. No recurring entries that auto-fill. No categories that sync from your bank. You type every single thing manually.

The speed improvement was in the interface — not in the awareness. I still had to think about each entry. I just didn't have to fight with cell formatting to do it.

That distinction matters more than it sounds.

What I Actually Lost

Let's be honest about the tradeoffs.

Formulas. My spreadsheet had a formula that showed me exactly how much I'd need to save per day to hit my month-end goal. I haven't rebuilt that in Monee yet.

History. Google Sheets auto-saves to Drive. Monee uses localStorage — which means if I clear my browser or switch devices, data is gone unless I export it. This is a real limitation I remind myself of regularly.

Collaboration. My partner can't see my budget unless they're on my machine. We still use a shared sheet for household expenses.

None of these made me go back. But I want to be clear: a web app isn't always a strict upgrade.

What I Gained

Focus. One budget, one screen, no distractions.

Speed on mobile. Logging an expense from my phone takes 10 seconds now. On a spreadsheet it took 45.

Privacy. Zero data leaves my browser. No Google reading my spending patterns. No bank OAuth flow. Nothing syncs anywhere.

A sense of ownership. I built this. I understand every line of it. When something doesn't work the way I want, I can fix it. That's different from using a tool someone else made.

The Real Lesson

The spreadsheet taught me to notice my spending. The web app lets me log it faster without losing that noticing.

The tool matters less than the habit.

If you're the kind of person who opens a spreadsheet every Sunday and actually fills it in — you don't need an app. The spreadsheet is working.

But if you find yourself skipping entries because the UI is annoying, or you're on mobile and it's just too slow — maybe it's worth trying something lighter.

Monee takes 8 seconds to start. No sign-up. No cloud. Just open it and go.

If you've ever maintained a budget spreadsheet, you'll feel right at home. Except it fits in your pocket.

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Monee is open-source and free forever. No ads, no subscriptions, no accounts. Just localStorage and good intentions.