Connect your accounts.
Then let MyKeeper™ go to work for you.
That is the whole setup: one step. Everything after it runs on rhythm, because control of a household's money is not achieved once. It is kept. Kept daily as the books stay current, monthly as the statement lands, yearly as the plan gets made, and in the moments before anything can surprise you. Here is what happens, and when.
One-Step Setup.
Every other tool in this category starts you at zero: an empty dashboard, categories to build, rules to write, a system to configure before it tells you anything. That setup cliff is where most households quit before they begin, and the ones who push through are rewarded with an empty month one. The work of starting is why nobody starts.
Here, connecting an account takes about a minute. You sign in at your bank, through Plaid, and we never see your credentials. Then MyKeeper goes to work on the history: up to two years of transactions from every account you connect, read, named, and filed. The first thing you see is not a blank page asking you to begin. It is a finished statement about a month you already lived.
Sign in at your bank, not here. Credentials go to your bank and nowhere else. The connection is read-only.
Up to two years of history. Most major institutions return the full two years. Your books get every day your bank will give us.
Income, mapped by source. MyKeeper groups your income by who pays it, so the statement reads the way your household actually earns.
A handful of questions, once. After the backfill, MyKeeper asks about the few things it genuinely cannot know. Each answer is permanent.
MyKeeper introduces itself. Then it briefs you.
Within a couple of hours of connecting your accounts, a text arrives. MyKeeper™ introduces itself and gets to work: it names the real number of transactions it is about to read, because the first thing you should feel is the size of the job you just resigned from. Then it asks one question: what are you hoping to accomplish this year and next? Whatever you answer, it remembers.
Then, once your books are settled, usually inside two weeks, MyKeeper sends the Household Briefing: an executive summary of your own household, in money. The rhythms of your income. Where the money actually goes. Every subscription you are paying for, including the ones you forgot. The odd patterns worth knowing, like the insurance that bills every other month. Most households have never seen this document about themselves. Yours arrives before you have paid a dollar.
MyKeeper: Hi Sam, I'm MyKeeper. I keep your books and I watch what's ahead. I'm starting on the books now: 2,014 transactions are loading from your accounts and my first job is to go through every one. Once it's settled, I'll text you the few things I couldn't place myself. Most of it I handle on my own.
MyKeeper: One question while I'm reading: what are you hoping to accomplish this year and next? I'll remember whatever you tell me.
Sam: pay off the truck, redo the kitchen, and stop feeling broke every december
MyKeeper: All three noted. Once the books are settled I'll send your first full briefing, and it will show you what December has actually been doing.
Job one: someone writes everything down.
Every dollar in, every dollar out, and what it was for, recorded the day it happens. When something is unclear, this job does not guess, it asks. In a business the person who does it is called a bookkeeper. You keep your evening.
Every day, MyKeeper reads what came in across every account and files it. When something genuinely needs your judgment, it texts you the question, and your reply settles it forever. That is the entire relationship: it works, it asks rarely, it remembers always.
Every transaction filed. Merchants named behind the cryptic bank descriptors, categories assigned, nothing waiting for you.
Refunds caught, transfers paired. A refund nets against the original spending. Money moving between your own accounts is never counted twice.
Subscriptions spotted. Recurring charges identified and watched, including when the price changes.
Questions by text, answered in a few words. Only what needs you, only once. Corrections teach it permanently.
Track anything, conversationally. Tell MyKeeper what you want watched and it builds the tag, confirms the merchants with you, and keeps it current.
Sam: we spend a lot of money on my sons baseball. can you find and tag all his baseball expenses so we can keep track and you can alert me to any changes?
MyKeeper: Happy to. Looking back through two years, I found 23 merchants that look like baseball, about $4,100 a year: BruceBolt, Marucci, Perfect Game, Prospect Wire, League Outfitters, a few tournament hotels, and some I'm less sure about, like Dugout Mugs and two Amazon orders. Want the full list to check off, or should I tag the obvious ones now and just ask about the maybes?
Sam: tag the obvious ones. dugout mugs was a gift, skip it
MyKeeper: Done. 21 merchants tagged baseball, Dugout Mugs excluded and I'll remember that. Anything new that looks like baseball gets tagged automatically, and I'll check with you when something's borderline. One more thing: is there baseball spending I wouldn't recognize? Cash, Venmo, anything that doesn't say baseball on the statement. If you name it, I'll catch it going forward. And I'll keep an eye on the total from here, flagging meaningful changes, not every glove.
Job two: someone makes sure it is true.
Checking the record against the bank, locking the month so nobody can quietly change it later, and fixing any later mistake in the open with a note about what changed. In a business this person is called a controller. Most people have never heard the word, and it might be the most important of the three: it is the reason you can read a statement without checking the math. Not one product on the market closes a family’s books.
Every business closes its books each month and gets a reading on the month it just had. Households never do. The month just rolls into the next one, nothing is ever settled, and December arrives with no idea what the year actually did. Without a close there is no Kept, no Margin, and no learning: just a running balance that resets your memory every few weeks. This is how a household can earn well for a decade and never know what it built.
The MarginSheet closes your month for you. The month that ended, settled: what came in, what went out, what you kept, your Margin. And the month you are in, projected: what is committed, what is likely, and where you are heading while there is still time to steer. Statements arrive by email. The numbers behind every line are one tap away.
Last month, settled. Income by source, spending by category, Kept in dollars, Margin as the percentage.
This month, projected. Commitments MyKeeper discovered from your history, including the odd rhythms: the insurance that bills every other month, the quarterly taxes, the annual renewals.
Every line opens. Tap any figure to see exactly which transactions made it. The books are always yours to inspect.
The 20% aim. Every MarginSheet shows your Margin against the standard: every household should aim to keep 20% of what it brings in.
Sam, July is closed, and it was a strong month. You kept $7,540 of the $24,180 that came in, a 31% Margin, your best since March. Income ran ahead of typical: The Acme W2 pay came in higher than usual, and consulting held steady.
Two things worth knowing from inside the month. Dining ran $1,240 against your usual $900, most of it the anniversary week. And the loan payments line dropped for good: the car loan you paid off in June is gone from your books.
August is shaped differently. The home policy's every-other-month payment and the auto renewal land in the same window, the home improvement run is still open at about $2,600, and the quarterly estimated tax payment is due. You are currently projected to run about $1,200 over for the month, covered from checking. Nothing needs you yet. Both statements are below.
MyKeeper warns you first.
Every alert your money sends today fires after the fact. The overdraft notice arrives after the overdraft. The statement arrives after the month. The balance tells you what is left, never what is coming. By the time a household learns something went wrong, the only move remaining is regret, and preventing that would require someone watching ahead every day. Nobody has a person for that. That was the whole problem.
MyKeeper is the person for that. It watches what is due, what is likely, and what that leaves, and when something needs you to know it, you hear about it before it happens. And when you have a decision to make, ask. It answers with arithmetic, shows you what happens if, and leaves the deciding where it belongs.
Coverage warnings. A message before a card payment your checking cannot cover.
Change notices. A note when a subscription price goes up or a new recurring charge appears.
The overspend heads-up. If the month is tracking to spend more than comes in, you know while there is still month left.
Ask it anything with a number in it. What the loan does to your Margin. What the car really costs. It models, you decide.
One promise about messages: if we send one, it is worth reading. No streaks, no nudges, no reminders to come look at something.
MyKeeper: Heads up, Sam: the Amex payment is due Friday at $3,180. After tomorrow's mortgage and the home insurance pull, checking lands around $2,400, so Friday would come up about $780 short. The next paycheck lands on the 15th. I'm here if you want to look at it together.
Sam: i'll push it to the 15th. good catch
Job three: someone looks ahead and answers.
Household planning is usually a January resolution: built from memory instead of books, authored in an evening, abandoned by February because nothing and nobody was keeping it. The failure was never commitment. It was that the plan had no data underneath it and no staff behind it.
Once a year, budget season opens, and you and MyKeeper plan the year together. It arrives knowing your books, so the session is a conversation about your life, not a form about your money: what is changing, what is coming, what it costs. You leave with the Annual Plan: the year's expected income, its commitments, its plans, and the Margin the year is shaped to produce. The plan lives in the product all year, and MyKeeper watches the year against it.
Three jobs. One number they all answer to.
Write it down. Make sure it is true. Look ahead and answer. Take away any one and the other two fall apart: a record nobody trusts gets ignored, a trustworthy record nobody reads goes nowhere, and answers without a record are just a chatbot.
All three arrive under one name, and you never need to know which one is speaking. The question on Tuesday, the closed month on the 5th, the answer from the store aisle on Friday: one correspondent, one number, your Margin.
Does MarginSheet use AI?
Yes, carefully. AI helps identify merchants and writes the plain-English messages, but it never does the math. Every number in every message comes straight from your actual record, or the message does not send. Your answers always win, and they stick.
This is The Margin Method™.
No charge for 14 days. We email you before anything begins.
Start with what your credit score actually costs you every month: our free annual report.