How to track spending without constantly checking your bank account

What your balance shows, and what it doesn't

Your balance is the money in one account right now. It doesn't show what's already spoken for, like a bill that comes out next week, so it can look fine on the 10th and be tight on the 25th. And it covers one account: if your credit card is at another bank, the balance you checked doesn't include it.

What you want to know is how much you've spent this month, and whether that's on track with what you planned. That comes from adding up your purchases, not from your balance.

1. Turn on purchase alerts, set as low as they go

Most large US banks can email you when your card is used, but you have to turn the alert on, and it's usually meant for large purchases. Set the amount as low as it goes, so nearly every purchase sends one:

• Chase: Single transaction above, set to $0.01.
• Capital One: Instant purchase notifications, set to $0.
• Wells Fargo: the purchase alert, set as low as it goes. On a credit card it's called Single Purchase Amount.
• American Express: Large Purchase, set to $1, the lowest it allows.
• U.S. Bank: Debit Posted on your credit card, left at $1, the lowest it allows.

Each guide has the menu path and the address the alerts come from. That's a lot of email, which is why the next step files it out of your inbox.

2. Have the alerts land in one place

Bank apps send phone notifications too, but each app keeps its own, so there's no one place to see all your cards. Email alerts from every bank can land in the same mailbox, and they stay there until you delete them.

In Gmail, a filter can file every alert under one label and keep them out of your inbox. How to track expenses from Gmail has the steps.

3. Once a week, compare the total with your plan

Pick a time, say Sunday evening, and add up the week's alerts. Compare the total with a weekly figure: take what you plan to put on your cards in a month, the everyday spending like groceries, eating out, gas and shopping, and divide by 4.3, the average number of weeks in a month. A $2,000 month is about $465 a week. Leave out rent, insurance and other bills that come once a month or once a year. They don't fall evenly across weeks, so they would throw the comparison off.

Checked weekly, an expensive week shows up while most of the month is still ahead of you, and a category that keeps running over, like eating out, shows up within a couple of weeks instead of on the statement. A spreadsheet with four columns is enough: date, store, amount, category.

Where this falls short

• Anything without an alert. Cash, and any card or account where you haven't turned alerts on.
• The smallest purchases, at some banks. Where the lowest setting is $1, a purchase of $1 or less sends no alert.
• Final amounts, sometimes. An alert can be sent when a charge is authorized, before it settles. A restaurant tip is added later, and at the pump the first amount is often a placeholder. Your statement has the final numbers.
• What's left in your account. Alerts tell you what you spent, not your balance, so before a large payment you'll still want to check it.
• Keeping up the spreadsheet. Typing in a week of purchases takes a while, and it's the step people tend to drop.

Why I built Bankless Budget

That last problem is where Bankless Budget started. I'd tried budget apps where you type in every purchase, and I never kept up. I'd forget a receipt here and there, and my numbers were never quite right. Every app I found that tracked spending automatically wanted access to my bank and card accounts, which always seemed like more access than the job needed. I didn't want to hand that over, and I still don't.

My first try at something else worked from uploaded statements. That was before AI, so I had to keep a parser for every bank's statement layout, and a statement only arrives once a month. Then I thought of having AI read the alert emails my card company was already sending after every purchase. That became Bankless Budget.

Once your alerts land in a Gmail label, Bankless Budget reads them with Google's Gemini AI and adds them up for you, by category and against your monthly budget, across all your cards.

In the sample month below, it's the 28th and $1,751.66 of a $2,240 budget is spent: 78%, comfortably inside. But Dining Out is $48.20 over its $400, and Groceries has used 88% of $800. You wouldn't see either of those from your card balances.

On the Free plan you press Import when you want an update. On Plus, alerts are imported as they arrive, and you can choose to get an email when new purchases put a category or the month over budget, or the month is on pace to go over, so you hear about it without opening anything. We don't ask for a bank login.