Kakeibo began as something intimate: a notebook in a drawer. Bringing it to your phone, many apps break that intimacy by asking for your bank credentials and uploading your spending habits to their servers. It doesn't have to be that way.
Your spending says a lot about you
Your spending history is one of the most revealing datasets that exists: where you eat, what you read, when you travel, what worries you. When a finance app stores that in the cloud, you're trusting that x-ray to a company — and to anyone who can reach its servers. Traditional kakeibo never had that problem: the notebook stayed home.
What "local-first" means
A local-first app keeps your data on your own device, not on a server. In practice:
- No accounts or sign-up: there's no email or password because there's nothing to log into.
- No bank linking: you log expenses yourself, like in the notebook.
- No servers to leak: if nobody stores your data off-device, nobody can lose or sell it.
What if I lose my phone?
It's the logical question. The local-first answer: a backup you control. Instead of uploading your data to the app maker's server, you generate a backup file and keep it wherever you like — your own iCloud Drive, your Google Drive, your email. The app never sees that file; only you do. So you get safety against a broken phone without giving up privacy.
Privacy isn't "trust us to look after your data." It's "we don't have your data."
No subscription, for consistency
Privacy and one-time pricing usually go together. An app with no servers has almost no recurring costs, so it doesn't need to charge you every month. The honest model is a one-time purchase: buy it once and it's yours, with no fees eating into your savings — the very thing kakeibo is trying to prevent.
Carry your kakeibo in your pocket
Zaimu is the kakeibo app that keeps your data only on your phone. No accounts, no cloud, no subscription.
Try Zaimu free Kakeibo calculator