Hi, We're Dave & Claire Shepherd!

Let us tell you why we built Our Budgets (and why we think you'll love it too)

Why We Built This...

We're just a regular couple who got completely fed up with trying to manage our household budget using complicated spreadsheets and confusing apps.

We tried everything. Every budget app, every fancy spreadsheet template, even some expensive software. But here's the thing: they all felt like they were designed for accountants, not for people like us who just want to know where our money is going!

Claire and I would spend our Sunday afternoons fighting with formulas instead of actually planning our finances. "There has to be a better way," I kept saying. And Claire would always reply, "Well, why don't you build one then?"

So that's exactly what we did! We built Our Budgets because we needed it ourselves. Every feature you see here started as something we personally wanted when managing our own household finances.

Dave and Claire Shepherd, founders of Our Budgets

What We Believe

What we know and understand : managing money shouldn't feel like a chore or require a degree in finance! We believe everyone deserves simple, straightforward tools that actually help instead of adding stress to your life.

When we built Our Budgets, we had three simple rules that we refused to break:

Keep It Simple

If we couldn't figure it out in 30 seconds, it was too complicated. No jargon, no confusing buttons — just the stuff that actually matters.

Work Together

Claire and I both needed to see and update our budget. No more "whose turn is it to update the spreadsheet?" — we can both work on it anytime.

Actually Useful

We wanted to see our money situation at a glance — where it's coming from, where it's going, and how much we have left. No hunting through layered connected spreadsheets!

Our "Aha!" Moment

Picture this: We're sitting at our kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by receipts, bank statements, and a laptop with about 15 different spreadsheet tabs open. We were supposed to be heading out with our friends for a walk but here we are planning our budget for the month arguing about formulas!

I remember looking at Claire and saying, "We're spending more time fidgeting about with these tools than actually managing our money. This is ridiculous!" That's when it hit us — if we're struggling with this stuff, other people like us must be too.

So we grabbed some paper and started sketching what a budget tool would look like if we designed it for ourselves. No fancy features we'd never use, no confusing terminology — just the basics done really, really well.

What's Next?

Here's the thing — we still use Our Budgets every single month for our own family finances. We have a daughter and 2 doggies which means our expenses can be very variable and difficult to track without a good budget planner. So this is why Our Budgets is important to us; we always think about features "it would be nice if we could..." but in the end are we actually solving a real problem or confusing it further.

Saying that, we love hearing from people who use Our Budgets because you often suggest things we never thought of. Our mantra is, "Tell us the problem, we'll think about the solution".

Our promise to you is simple: we'll never add a complicated feature just because we can. Everything we build has to pass the "Would Dave and Claire actually use this?" test first.

Give it a try..

We're not building a community, we're just looking to help people who believe managing money should be simpler. Give it a try and let us know if we can do it better.