The Monthly Budget Tracker

My Notion setup for tracking every dirham that comes in, goes out, and gets saved toward the pilot fund.

The System

The tracker lives in Notion — the same tool I use for project management, notes, and general life organisation. It's not a complex financial model. It's a straightforward monthly tracker with three categories:

Income

Whatever comes in each month. This includes:

• Revenue from ventures (when it exists)
• Allowances and other income sources
• Any money generated from building

The income column is aspirational more than it is consistent right now. LockIn has a subscription model. Simplifly is building toward B2B deals. Raly could generate data partnerships. But the honest state of things is that I'm 15 and the revenue streams are being built, not flowing steadily.

Expenses

Where money goes. As a teenage builder, the expense categories are unusual:

• Apple Developer Program — $99/year, non-negotiable for shipping iOS apps
• Domains — gosimplifly.com and others, because every project needs a web presence
• Subscriptions and tools — kept minimal by using free tiers wherever possible
• Prototype materials — NFC cards for LockIn, materials for F1 in Schools
• Normal teenager stuff — because I'm still 15

The philosophy is aggressive cost minimisation. Photopea over Photoshop. Vercel's free tier over paid hosting. GitHub's free repositories. Supabase's free tier. Every free tier is a deliberate choice, not a compromise.

Savings (Pilot Fund)

The most important column. Everything left after expenses goes toward Emirates Flight Training Academy. The number grows slowly, but it grows. Every month, the tracker shows progress — or lack of it — toward the dream.

Why Track?

At 15, most people don't track their money. Why would they? The amounts are small, the stakes feel low, and there's always next month.

But when you have a goal with a specific price tag — flight training that costs serious money — and a timeline — before age 18 — tracking becomes essential. Not tracking means not knowing. Not knowing means not adjusting. Not adjusting means missing the target.

The monthly budget tracker forces honesty. Did I save this month or not? Did that domain purchase make sense or was it impulse? Am I on track or falling behind?

What It Teaches

Running this tracker monthly has taught me financial habits that will outlast the tracker itself:

• Every purchase has an opportunity cost. That $12 domain is $12 not saved for flight school.
• Revenue forecasting is guessing. Until money actually arrives, projected income is fiction. The tracker only counts real money.
• Consistency beats intensity. Saving a small amount every month beats saving nothing for six months and then trying to catch up.
• Visibility drives behaviour. Just seeing the numbers changes how you spend. The tracker is as much a psychological tool as a financial one.

The Bigger Picture

The monthly budget tracker isn't really about money management. It's about discipline. The same discipline that makes me track expenses is the discipline that makes me ship products, show up to co/Build, and grind through Xcode build errors at midnight.

Money is just the metric. The habit of tracking, adjusting, and optimising — that's the skill.

See Also

• The Budget -- the broader financial picture
• The Pilot Fund -- where the savings go
• Pilot Dream -- why the numbers matter
• The Solo Founder -- the financial reality of building alone