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No buy tracker apps compared: days, items or money

By , who built Keep the Diff

A no buy year starts as a list of rules. No new clothes. No books while the shelf is full. No takeout on weekdays. Replacements allowed when something wears out. The list is personal, and that is most of why it works.

The apps built to track it look different from each other and mostly differ in one thing: what they count. There are three answers, and each one changes how the year feels.

Trackers that count days

The most common kind is a calendar. Each day you kept your rules gets a mark, and the screen fills up over the month. It is quick, visual, and satisfying in the first few weeks.

The trouble starts with the first allowed purchase or the first slip. A day is either clean or it is not, so a $4 paperback marks the day the same way a $400 coat would. Many of these apps also show a streak, which goes back to zero after a slip. A no buy year lasts 365 days, and a counter that resets is a hard thing to care about in month nine.

Trackers that count items

Some trackers keep a tally of things you did not buy: the dress, the gadget, the second candle. A tally never resets, which is an improvement, and the list itself can be interesting to read back.

An item count treats every item the same. Passing on a $3 snack and passing on a $300 jacket each add one, so the number says how often you resisted and very little about what that was worth.

Trackers that count money

The third kind asks for a price. You log what you were about to spend, and the total grows by that amount. The number means something on its own: $1,240 kept by June is a figure you can compare with a goal, a debt or a trip.

Money also handles the case the other two cannot, which is spending less. A no buy year nearly always allows some purchases. Replacing worn out shoes with a $60 pair when you had been eyeing a $150 pair is a good decision, and only a tracker that counts money can record the $90 you kept.

Questions to ask any tracker

  1. What is the big number on the main screen? Days, a count or an amount. That number is what you will be looking at in month nine.
  2. What happens after a slip? Try it in the first week. If the screen resets, you will know how a bad week will feel.
  3. Can it record a partial win? Spending less than you planned should count.
  4. Does it fit your rules? A no buy list is usually a set of categories. Being able to tag clothes, books or eating out makes the year easier to read back.
  5. Does it want your bank? A purchase you did not make never appears in a bank feed, so a connection adds nothing for this job.
  6. Is logging free? The everyday entry should work without paying.

Where Keep the Diff fits

Keep the Diff counts money. Each entry is two numbers, what you were ready to spend and what you actually spent, and the difference is added to a running total. There is no streak and nothing resets, so a slip simply adds nothing that day.

Milestones mark your first $100, $500 and $1,000 kept, and your 10th, 25th, 50th and 100th better decision, so a long year has moments worth noticing. A goal with a photo gives the total somewhere to go. With Premium, categories match the rules on your list, so you can see what your no clothes rule alone has kept.

Logging is free on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, Windows and Android, with no account and no bank connection. For the difference between the formats themselves, read no buy year, no spend month, low buy. For the apps built around single no spend days, see no spend challenge apps compared.

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