Budgeting for Australian households
Buy a coffee, type 12, tap Coffee, and kitty shows you what’s left in that part of the budget. It only takes a few seconds, so it’s easy to keep up with.
Bills, the kids’ costs, savings goals and super all go in the same kitty, and each adult in the house has their own sign-in.
Free for 30 days, then A$8 a month or A$80 a year. You can cancel whenever you like.
Go on, tap a category
Enter an amount greater than $0.
Try a few, and use Undo to take them back off.
Quick-add is the screen kitty is built around. If writing down a coffee feels like a chore, nobody does it, and the budget turns into guesswork.
It’s the only thing on the screen, so there’s nothing to look for.
The categories you use most sit at the top, and the tap saves it. There’s no Save button to find.
A small receipt shows how that budget is going, say $62 of $120 spent with $58 left. If you’ve gone over, it tells you plainly.
Notes, receipt photos and who the money was for can wait. You can add them from the receipt, or come back to the entry later.
This is the app itself, recorded on a phone with a made-up household. A coffee goes in, the dashboard and budget show where that leaves things, $100 goes into the emergency fund, and a bank statement comes in with the coffee already recognised.
kitty started as our family’s budget spreadsheet in Adelaide, with two adults, three kids and a long list of bills. Everything in it is here because we used it.
Bills and the next 14 days
The rego is yearly, the power bill is quarterly and swimming is fortnightly, so sooner or later two of them land in the same week. kitty lays out the next two weeks and tells you in words when something’s overdue.
Budget
With a spreadsheet, you usually find out the grocery money ran out after it has. kitty shows how each category is going against how far through the month you are, and says plainly when one is running over.
Safe to spend today
A few days before payday it’s hard to know whether takeaway fits, because you’d have to add up everything still to come out. kitty does that sum for you, bills included, and shows one number for today.
Receipt photos
Paper receipts fade, and the one you need for a return or a tax claim is never in your wallet. Take a photo as you log the spend and it stays with the entry.
Shared as it happens
When two of you spend from the same budget, it’s easy to both buy the milk, or for each of you to think the other paid the school fees. You each sign in with your own email, and what one of you logs shows up on the other’s phone straight away. The dashboard even shows who’s been at the kitty today.
Kids
Between childcare, school fees and the odd excursion, it’s hard to say what each child actually costs. kitty gives each one a card with what they cost a month, childcare after the Child Care Subsidy included, and their one-off costs for the year alongside.
Add a cost from a child’s card, or mark who a spend was for when you open it later. If there are no kids in the house, you won’t see any of this.
Your own dashboard
One of you checks what’s due before payday, and the other goes straight to the savings jars. Each adult arranges their own dashboard: which cards, in what order and at what size, with a few kept as tabs, like one for every day and one for month end. Changing yours never changes anyone else’s.
Goals
You’re putting money away for a holiday and want to know you’ll have enough by the time you go. Each goal is a jar that fills as you add to it, and shows how many months are left at the amount you plan to put in.
Fill a jar and the kitty climbs in. That’s a good kitty.
Debts
Paying the minimum on a credit card, it’s hard to tell when it’ll ever be gone, or what paying a little more would change. kitty shows how many months until you’re debt-free, and how many fewer it takes if you pay a little extra. It puts the highest interest first, because that order costs you least.
Net worth
It’s hard to tell whether you’re getting ahead when the savings, the super, the house and the mortgage all sit in different places. kitty adds them up and records the total every night, so you can see which way it’s heading.
Monthly report
The monthly money talk goes better when you both have the numbers in front of you. kitty puts the month into a report you can print or save.
Offline
Country servos and underground car parks rarely have good signal. kitty keeps the entry on your phone and sends it once you’re back in range.
On the way
Your monthly report will come as a PDF each month, ready to print or send on. We haven’t promised a date. It’ll turn up in the app when it’s ready.
Also in the box
Long term
If retirement is in sight, kitty projects your super from the day work stops and draws it down over the years, counting the Age Pension from pension age. It starts from what you’ve already entered for the budget, so there’s very little extra to set up.
It’s worked out fortnightly at the rates in force and added in from pension age.
Try retiring earlier or spending less, and your real plan stays exactly as it was.
Open “How this was worked out” under any figure to see each step and the rates it used. The monthly report lists every rule it applied, and which version.
The retirement pages use larger text and bigger buttons throughout.
This is general information, not financial advice. The projections depend on the figures you enter and the rules in force, and they aren’t a guarantee of what will happen.
These are screens from kitty, with a made-up couple.
It’s your household’s money, so kitty is built to keep it between the people in your house.
Most budgeting apps ask you to link your bank before you’ve seen anything. kitty doesn’t, because you log spending as it happens and set bills and income up once.
Each adult signs in with their own email, and every household is kept apart from every other.
Every change is kept along with what it replaced, so anything deleted by mistake can be restored from History.
A full copy is made every night, and the last 30 nights and 12 months are kept.
kitty is paid for by the households that use it, so there are no ads, and no loans or cards to steer you towards.
Payments go through Stripe, and kitty never sees or stores your card number.
“Our budget never fell apart on the maths. It fell apart because nobody wrote the coffee down, so we made that the easiest part.”
Everyone in the house gets every feature, on whatever device they use. It’s free for 30 days, and nothing is charged today.
A$80/ year
A$6.67 a month, billed yearly.
A$8/ month
Billed monthly. You can switch to yearly at any time.
Free for 30 days, then A$80 a year. We’ll email you a week before the trial ends.
Free for 30 days, then A$8 a month. We’ll email you a week before the trial ends.
Prices are in Australian dollars. Payments are handled by Stripe, and you can cancel from Settings at any time.
How checkout works
If yours isn’t here, email [support address] and one of us will reply.
No. kitty never asks for your bank login. You log spending as it happens, which takes a few seconds, and set your bills and income up once. If you’d rather catch up in one go, download a statement from your internet banking and import it. kitty reads the file on your device.
Yes. Each adult signs in with their own email and works in the same kitty. Kids don’t need accounts; a cost can simply be marked as being for one of them.
It works on both. kitty runs in the browser, and on iPhone and Android you can add it to your home screen like an app. If you lose signal, entries wait and send themselves once you’re back online.
No. It’s general information, projected from the figures you enter and the published Australian rules. For advice about your own situation, talk to a licensed financial adviser.
You pay nothing for the first 30 days. Your card is saved with Stripe at checkout and first charged on day 31. We’ll email you a week before that, and you can cancel from Settings at any time.
You keep full access until the time you’ve paid for runs out. After that kitty goes read-only for 90 days, so you can still look back, export your data or pick up where you left off. Then the household’s data is deleted for good, and backup copies age out within 12 months. If you’d like it gone sooner, you can delete it yourself from Settings.
See how it feels to log a spend in three taps. If kitty isn’t right for your household, cancel before day 30 and you won’t pay anything.
Start your 30-day free trial