Ever notice how budgeting feels like a part-time job that doesn’t pay? Between receipts, bills, subscriptions, and the “how did DoorDash get me again?” moments, the math gets ugly fast. But what if your budget could quietly update itself while you’re living your life — or better, while you’re ignoring your life?
The Setup
Here’s the hack: connect Google Sheets with Tiller Money (or if you prefer all-cloud simplicity, use Notion + Zapier). Both setups turn your messy stream of expenses into clean, living dashboards that don’t need your daily attention.
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Tiller Money + Google Sheets:
Link your bank accounts once, and Tiller automatically imports new transactions every day. Your sheet becomes a self-updating snapshot — graphs, categories, spending limits — all without you touching a cell. You can even color-code when you go over budget (because shame can be motivating). Automatic imports -
Notion + Zapier:
If you’re more into dashboards than spreadsheets, create a Notion “Budget Tracker” page and use Zapier to pull in daily spending from your bank’s notification emails. Every purchase automatically lands in your Notion database, tagged and timestamped. Budget made simple
The Experiment
I set both systems to run side-by-side for two weeks. The result? My phone stopped pinging with overdraft anxiety, and my budget started predicting when I’d run low on coffee money. It was less “accountant at a desk,” more “budget ghost doing chores.”
The Takeaway
Automation doesn’t make you careless with money — it just removes the friction that makes you avoid dealing with it. Once you see your spending trends visualized in real time, budgeting stops being punishment and starts feeling like strategy.
If your finances are chaos in a spreadsheet right now, you don’t need discipline — you need delegation. Hand it off to the bots.