The Real Reason You Stop Tracking Expenses After 2 Weeks

Tried probably 6 or 7 expense apps over the years. Quit all of them around week two, sometimes earlier.

For a while I thought I was just bad at habits. Probably partly true. But the specific moment I'd always stop was the same one - I'd want to log something quickly and the app would need like 4-5 fields filled out. Category, amount, merchant, date. Sometimes a note field. Standing at a coffee counter with people behind me in line I'm just not doing that.

I looked up whether this is common at some point and there's apparently a lot written about app abandonment in personal finance, idk how accurate any of the specific numbers are but the pattern seems consistent. People start, then stop. Then start again with a new app, then stop again.

I ended up on DrakeAI mostly by accident - someone mentioned it in a comment somewhere. It's basically just a text box. Type "coffee 4.50" and it's logged. It guesses the category, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. I don't bother fixing the wrong ones most of the time. They're close enough.

I've been using it for a few months now which is longer than any other app I've tried. Can't fully explain why this one stuck when others didn't. Probably the entry speed. Probably also that it works offline and doesn't need my bank connected.

Anyway. If you've quit multiple apps and blamed yourself for it, it might not be you. The entry friction is real.