Why I Quit RocketMoney After 3 Years and Built My Own Budgeting App

The Frustration

I've tried every budgeting app. RocketMoney, Mint, Copilot. They all promised financial clarity. They all failed me.

For years, I cycled through budgeting apps on and off. Each time, the pattern was the same: download the app, connect my accounts, spend hours setting up categories, religiously track every transaction for a few weeks... and then abandon it entirely.

The problem wasn't my discipline. It was the apps themselves.

The Problems With Traditional Budgeting Apps

Auto-Categorization Hell

Every budgeting app promises "smart" auto-categorization. In reality, it's anything but smart. I'd spend more time fixing categories than actually understanding my spending.

Was that comedy show ticket "Entertainment" or "Dining" because I had dinner and drinks there? The app guessed wrong every time (and truthfully, I don't know what I would categorize that comedy show example as). Don't even get me started on Venmo transactions, or friends paying me back for dinner would show up as "Income," while me paying friends back was categorized as some random expense.

The cognitive load of constantly correcting these errors made me dread opening the app.

The Credit Card Double-Counting Trap

Here's something that drove me absolutely crazy: I put almost all my purchases on credit cards for the rewards. So when I'd buy groceries, it would show up as a transaction. Then when I paid off my credit card at the end of the month, that payment would also appear as an expense.

The result? My "spending" looked double what it actually was. The mental math required to understand my true financial picture was exhausting.

Feature Bloat

RocketMoney tries to do everything. Subscription cancellation. Investment tracking. Automatic savings. Bill negotiation. Credit score monitoring. Late payment alerts (that always arrived after the fact).

I didn't need a Swiss Army knife. I needed one tool that did one thing well: tell me how much I could actually spend.

The "Aha" Moment

After years of frustration, I realized something: the budgeting strategy that actually worked for me was incredibly simple. No apps required.

Here's what I did:

• My income comes in twice a month
• I have fixed NEED expenses: rent, utilities, internet, gas
• I have fixed WANT expenses: Netflix, Spotify, gym membership
• Everything else goes on my credit cards

The formula became: Income - Fixed Expenses = What I Can Spend This Month

Every Sunday, I'd do one simple thing: open my credit card apps, note the total balance across all cards, and subtract that from my remaining budget. That's it. No categorizing. No analyzing where every dollar went. Just one number that told me if I should take it easy this week or if I had room to breathe.

It came down to understanding spending patterns at a high level, instead of getting hung up on whether a transaction should be categorized as "drinks" or "entertainment" because they were drinks at a comedy show.

Why I Built OneView

I looked for an app that did this simple calculation for me. Setup my accounts, track my fixed expenses, and show me one number: what can I actually spend?

That app didn't exist. So I built it.

OneView answers the one question that matters: What's my true spending power after accounting for everything I owe? It shows four numbers:

• What you have - Your current total assets across all accounts
• What you will have - Your forecasted total assets (factoring in your upcoming income)
• What you owe - Your total liabilities (credit cards, loans)
• What you can spend - The number that actually matters

Green means you're good. Red means tighten up. No categories. No mental math. Just clarity.

Ready to Try a Simpler Approach?

If you're tired of the categorization game and just want to know what you can actually spend, give OneView a try. It's the budgeting dashboard I wish existed years ago.