Keep the Diff: Save Money

Little Bird Trading

About this app

Keep the Diff is a money saving app built around one subtraction. Not a budget, not a bank connection, and no red numbers.

You talk yourself out of things all the time. The takeaway you decided against, the jacket in the tab you closed, the second round you skipped. Nothing records any of it, so it never feels like progress. Keep the Diff records it.

PLANNED SPEND MINUS ACTUAL SPEND EQUALS THE DIFF

Two numbers, and that is the whole thing:

1. What you were ready to spend. The dinner you nearly ordered, the shoes you nearly replaced.
2. What you actually spent. Often nothing. There is a "Didn't buy it" button for the common case.

The difference is yours. This savings tracker adds it up by week, by month, and toward whatever you are saving for. Logging one takes three taps.

NOT A BUDGET APP, AND NOT A NO BUY CHALLENGE

A budget app tells you what you are allowed to spend and scolds you when you go over. A no spend challenge asks you to say no to everything and be pleased about it.

Keep the Diff does neither. It never tells you what to spend, it never links your bank account, and it never shows you a red number. Buy the thing anyway and nothing happens: there is simply no Diff to record that time. Nothing resets, no streak breaks, and the lowest a week can read is zero.

Spent less rather than nothing at all? That counts too. Ninety dollars planned and forty spent is a fifty dollar Diff.

WHY AN EXPENSE TRACKER THAT TRACKS WHAT YOU DIDN'T SPEND

Every other personal finance app is built around transactions, so the only thing it can show you is money leaving. The decisions that stop money leaving are invisible to it, even though they are the entire reason there is anything left at the end of the month.

This one is the opposite. It is a spending tracker for the spending that did not happen, which turns out to be the part worth being proud of.

WHAT IS FREE

Logging decisions is free and always will be, with no ads and no limit. So is this week's total, this month's, your recent history, and the weekly recap card you can share.

WHAT PREMIUM ADDS

- Your full history, however far back it goes, with CSV export
- Categories and breakdowns, so you can see where the Diff comes from
- Goals, with a photo of the thing you are saving for
- Home screen widgets
- The watch app
- One subscription covers every device you own

ON EVERY DEVICE YOU OWN

Android phone, Android tablet and Wear OS, plus iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Windows. The moment you decide not to spend is a moment you are standing in a shop, not sitting at a desk.

YOUR MONEY STAYS YOURS TO KNOW ABOUT

Keep the Diff does not connect to your bank. There is nothing to link, no credentials to hand over, and no transaction feed to read. There is no account and no sign-in. Everything you log lives on your own device, and the numbers you type are the only numbers this money saving app has.

What’s new

A dependency update. Google Play flagged an out-of-date library that arrived inside another one; nothing in the app used it, but it shipped in the download all the same, so it is now pinned to a current version.

Nothing else changes.