Your first session with Cake Budget
About 15 minutes of setup, once. After that, the app does the upkeep, not you.
Your coach recommended Cake Budget because it does not depend on daily willpower. This guide walks you through setting it up one time. You will not need to do it again.
Open your coach's link
Sign up through the link your coach gave you (it looks like trycakebudget.com/?via=their-name). Signing up through it gives you a 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14, and you will not be asked for a credit card.
Create your account
Use email and a password, or sign in with Google. If you use email, open the confirmation message we send you and click the link before continuing. Then choose a plan; most people start with Starter. Nothing is charged during your trial, and there is no card on file to forget about.
Connect your bank
Cake connects through Plaid, the same secure service used by major financial apps. The connection is read-only: Cake can see your transactions to sort them, but it can never move your money or change anything at your bank. If your bank won't connect, the same screen offers SimpleFIN instead (a separate $1.50 per month service), or you can skip and add accounts by hand.
Let Cake propose your budget
Cake reads your recent transactions, finds your paycheck pattern (or irregular income like gig payouts), and proposes budget categories (called slices), auto-sorting rules, and a payday funding plan. This takes a few minutes and happens automatically.
Review and confirm
Keep what looks right, rename or remove what does not. This is the part worth doing with your coach if you are in a session together. When you confirm, your plan is live.
Put it on your home screen
So the traffic light is one tap away. On iPhone, open app.trycakebudget.com in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open it in Chrome, tap the menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.
After today
These things happen on their own. Doing nothing is the system working.
On payday
Your paycheck is detected when it lands, even a few days early, and splits itself across your categories.
When you spend
Transactions sort themselves into your slices as they sync. Anything Cake doesn't recognize yet comes out of Safe to Spend until you give it a slice. There is nothing to log or enter.
When you are deciding
Open the app and look at the traffic light. Green means safe to spend. Amber means go carefully. Red means hold off. That is the whole habit.
If you drift for a while, that is fine. Disappear for two weeks and nothing breaks. Paychecks keep funding your categories, transactions keep sorting, and you come back to a short summary of what happened while you were away. If anything still needs a slice, sorting it is one button, not a catch-up session.
Your account is yours alone
Your coach cannot see your account, your balances, or your transactions. Cake never sells your data, and only shares it with the services that run the app, like Plaid for your bank connection. What you discuss in your sessions is entirely up to you.