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How I’m Streamlining My Life in 2020

Posted on January 27, 2020March 22, 2020 by Babz

The last few years, I’ve been struggling a little bit. Getting our girls was a bit unexpected, and to be honest, in the beginning I thought I had it all figured out already.

I didn’t.

It took me a long time to even admit that I was drowning in the current situation. I was falling so far behind with everything I wanted out of life. I’d quit college (for the second time), I stopped working for clients, I even abandoned my old blog because it seemed silly to write about writing when there was a small child who depended on me for almost everything.

(No, that’s not a shot at most mommy bloggers — I genuinely didn’t think I had the time in my day to manage both.)

However, this year, I’ve decided to do things a little bit differently. I acknowledge that some of the things I gave up were due to First Time Parent Syndrome — quite simply, I was overprotective and overinvested because I’d never been in this situation before and was just so convinced I was already screwing it up.

If that sounds like you, don’t worry — you’re not screwing it all up. We’re all doing the best we can with the information we have.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
–Maya Angelou

If you’re looking to dig yourself out of that rut, too (and you think there’s any chance I may have done it the right way!), keep reading — I’ll share with you how I’m getting back on track to my best life in 2020.

I’m streamlining my planner system.

As a planner addict not in recovery, it’s hard for me to admit when I’m leaning on my planning system too hard. In fact, most of the times I’m feeling overwhelmed, I tend to lean into the planning because it helps me to make sense of the mess. This year, I’m taking a different approach.

I’m not micro-managing Google Calendar anymore.

There was a time (not very long ago, in fact) that my Google Calendar would be filled to the brim with my ideal schedule. I thought that, by filling in what I wanted my days to look like, I’d be pressured into making them actually look like what I had mapped out.

Spoiler alert: This just left me feeling overwhelmed and behind. All. The. Time. Clinging to my vision of what a perfect day, a perfect week, or a perfect month “really looked like” was damaging the way that I viewed what my days, weeks, and months actually looked like. I couldn’t see how well I was doing because I was too hung up on the things I was missing.

Now that I’m not using Google Calendar for a catch-all for everything in my life, I can look at it and just see what I need to do at any point in time. And you know what? That’s a little less work than it felt like before, now that I don’t have so many optional tasks and incidentals cluttering up the view. But, I still have Google Calendar there to catch the things I might otherwise forget to move to my planner. And having a specified “Google Calendar date” day means I’m not forgetting to move anything, either.

I’m building systems instead of individual plans.

I’m a creature of habit, and while the idea of doing something new and different every day sounds exciting, it doesn’t actually work for me. I run way better on routines. I was throwing myself off every single day trying to work a fresh plan out so it worked… then I’d be back at square one the next morning trying to make that plan work, too. This was so draining!

This year, I’m simplifying my life by creating systems. Since my brain and body work better on a routine, I’m breaking my weekly goals down into a few smaller systems, organized by my color codes. Baby Dragon’s activity calendar gets broken down according to what makes the most sense for us that day. “Walk and talk” activities are moved to days when we’re already walking to and from school, “family game night” activities are moved to days when we’re all having dinner together anyway, and so on.

Another system I’m using is the blog system. Since my wife has the same work days every week (and I try not to spend too much “work time” on her days off), it’s easy for me to plan ahead which days I’ll be working on active parts of the blog process, and which days I should do some back-end stuff. It’s not a perfect system; there have been a couple pretty big snags already. But what’s important is that there’s a framework in place that I can compare to, and it makes it easier to fit other things into the system.

Schedule, Tasks, and Reminders.

This year, I’ve decided that these are the only three categories that really matter, and these are the three categories I separate my plans into.

“Schedule” items are things that are time-specific. For example, my wife’s work days, my participation days at the preschool, and of course the much-loved Show and Tell days are all penned into the schedule section (and backed up in my Google Calendar).

“Task” items are things that need action, although not necessarily my own action. I write down my four-year-old’s “family activities” (the school’s fancy way of giving homework without calling it homework) and the chores we have to do around the house. I write down the bills I have to pay manually and the errands I need to run. In general, these things can be migrated to another day if they need to, but sometimes that’s only possible because I plan to do them ahead of time (and sometimes the plans fall through).

Lastly, “Reminder” items are things that are going to happen whether I do anything about them or not. This is where I hold information about incoming packages, auto-pay bills, birthdays, holidays… The things that continue all on their own. These things don’t necessarily need to be handled, but they keep me up-to-date on the things that otherwise might get lost among the other two categories.

Keeping everything separated makes my anxious mind just a little bit more restful, and it helps me to remember what’s really important. At a glance, I can look and see what’s expected of me, and all that’s kept on my Google Calendar is the stuff that’s non-negotiable.

Make it cute!

For those of us who are functional planners (or non-planners), the idea of making something cute so that we use it more doesn’t necessarily come easy to us. However, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Would you rather look at a plain, boring spreadsheet, or a fancy infographic? Most people would pick the second. (I happen to fall somewhere in between, but that’s another story for another day.)

What do I mean by make it cute? Simply, stickers (and emojis, for the digital things) can go a long way toward not only making sure you love your planning system, but can also make it easier to see things at a glance. You don’t (necessarily) have to read an emoji or sticker… You can just look at it and tell what it’s trying to communicate. Slap those emojis and stickers into your planning system strategically and let them do their thing.

(I’ll have an entire post about emoji-coding coming up soon; don’t forget to keep an eye out for it!)

I’m streamlining my budget.

I emoji-code my banking app, too.

As a matter of fact, emoji-coding the banking app came before emoji-coding my Google Calendar. Since I’m often budgeting on-the-go in between other tasks and schedule items, I need to be able to see my plans as efficiently as possible. Assigning specific emojis to specific bills helps with this.

For example, cash back budgets get the 🏧 emoji, my car insurance and registration get the 🚘 emoji, anything on auto-pay gets the 🔁 emoji, and anything that requires extra action on my part gets the ⚠️ emoji. Whether I’m assigning charges that have already come through or planning for the next paycheck, these emojis help me see at a glance what I need to know about each budget item. I still use text labels, too, for further clarification, but most of the time the emojis are what I plan from.

(Soon I’ll have an entire post dedicated to how I emoji-code my budget and calendar apps — keep an eye out for that post if this idea intrigues you!)

Auto-pay is not the enemy.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve tried to streamline my life and screwed myself over with auto-pay. Since I’m just a tad bit obsessive (and simultaneously forgetful), I’ve been known to manually pay bills that were already set to auto-pay… Which, without proper planning, can easily overdraw an account. Thankfully our bank doesn’t actually overdraw, it simply borrows from another budget, but I have frantically moved money around so that my numbers balance out.

However, since I assigned a specific emoji to auto-pay bills, the likelihood of double-paying has gone down significantly. The truth is, for the large majority of people, auto-pay is a lifesaver. Now that I have an effective way to differentiate bills that actually don’t need any attention from me, it feels like I’ve got a virtual assistant handling the mundane. (I’ve had a virtual assistant who didn’t handle the mundane as well as my system does.) This frees up time and energy to focus on the things I can’t automate.

There’s never too much cushion.

One of the things that has helped the most with the budget is being able to cushion things. I understand that not everyone can afford the luxury of a fully-padded budget; I know we sure can’t. But even just rounding up to the next dollar can have a tremendous impact on your financial situation. The only “scrambling for change” I do now is moving around the cushions from one budget to another. I try to pad the budgets a little more whenever I can, but I know that even if I don’t, I’m covered.

Let’s say, for example, my credit card minimum payments are $25/month. Obviously paying just the minimum is no way to get out of debt, so I budget $25 for each credit card out of each paycheck. On the checks we have more money to work with, I can even bump that up to $50/check, but I know that I’ll never dip under the $25. When I’m balancing out the budget at the end of the pay period, I can choose to use that cushion to pay on the credit cards, or I can move it to another budget that needs it just a little more. Either way, it’s like finding extra money laying around — exactly where I put it.

Bonus tip: Switch to Simple for your online banking.

I wish I could take all the credit for refining my budget system, but alas, sometimes it really is in the tools themselves. We’ve used Simple as our primary bank for almost three years now, and the tools to get through our financial crises were sitting there the whole time — I just had to learn how to use them. Your banking app might even offer similar features; it’s worth looking into.

If you’re on the lookout for a new bank yourself, I cannot recommend Simple enough. The app uses the time-honored principle of “envelope budgeting” with a unique edge. I can partition my wife’s paychecks (and my infrequent income) into as many separate budgets as I need. Whatever’s leftover goes into “Safe to Spend,” a catch-all budget; this is the only amount you can see without manually opening your Goals and Expenses tabs.

Best of all, in the three years we’ve been using Simple, we have never been charged a single fee (aside from the odd withdrawal fee when my wife refuses to use the Free ATM finder). We even have a high-yield savings account that pays out interest every month based on the end-of-day balance. As long as I keep funneling money into our savings goals, the savings will keep paying me, too. 🙂

I’m streamlining my dinner plans.

In 2020, I’m over obsessively planning intricate meals. The reality is that meal-planning is supposed to make your life simpler, and I was doing it all wrong. These days, I’m doing practically no grocery shopping anymore, which makes my anxiety a lot easier to manage, and also frees up some extra time for things. Still, I have a homemade dinner on the table six nights a week. How do I do it?

Meal kit delivery.

This is the age of delivery — nearly anything you want can be ordered ahead of time and shipped to your door for a small fee. Dinner is no exception. I’m not totally new to the idea of the meal kit; the one we subscribe to now is not the first one we’ve ever subscribed to, but there are a few reasons Every Plate is my new favorite.

Affordable: Every Plate costs about half the price of meal kits from their parent company, HelloFresh. I loved HelloFresh, but couldn’t afford to continue after my promo pricing because I would have been paying about $70/week just to feed my wife and I two days a week. Now, I feed all four of us, three days a week, with the same budget.
Tasty: I don’t think there’s been a single meal yet that we haven’t wanted to make again sometime. Baby Dragon gets a kick out of announcing which ones should definitely go in our recipe book (I haven’t had the heart to tell her we’re not doing that anymore!), and I get a kick out of taking credit for awesome, creative meals.
Simple: Every Plate sends me an e-mail when it’s time to pick my meals for the next week, and the meal-picker is incredibly intuitive. Even the kids can get involved in it, since there is a big picture of each dinner (and they know I’ll be leaving out any onions, jalapenos, and mushrooms pictured). When it comes time to make the meals, there are six steps — that’s it. They know that their main customers are busy families, and they run accordingly.
Filling: To be fair, we have a box meant for four adults, and two of our family are children (one of whom hasn’t been spending much time at home lately). But we almost always have a small portion of leftovers because the meals are meant to fill a family’s hungry bellies.
Not excessively healthy: I try to be a reasonably healthy cook, but let’s be real — kids complicate that. My Every Plate meals aren’t meant to be my kids’ healthy solution. They’re meant to make my life easier. I know that these meals are going to skimp on vegetables a little bit, so I just stock up on extra veggies with my grocery box. I feel better because I don’t have to fight with the kids, and they feel better because they’re still getting a balanced diet. We just don’t make every single meal a perfect balance anymore.

(Please note that if you have specific dietary needs, Every Plate is not able to manage those and you must personally decide which meals work with your family’s needs. Our “needs” are no artificial colors, low salt, and no “problematic” ingredients — all of which are easy to manage. I’ll be writing up a full review of Every Plate soon, so if you’re waiting for more information before pulling the trigger, rest assured — it’s coming soon.)

Grocery delivery.

Since I’m way too much of a control freak to let someone else pick all of our dinners (and also Every Plate doesn’t offer a four-person, seven-meal dinner box), we also get actual groceries delivered, too. But, since I’m also a little extra, they’re ugly groceries.

(Ugly produce from Imperfect Foods, that is.)

While I’m not totally in love with Imperfect Foods, I do like that it’s semi-automated. That is, I can choose on a week-by-week basis whether I customize my box or not. I do, of course, because of aforementioned control-freak-iness, but it’s nice knowing that I could skip it if things get too hectic. I’ve already told them that there are 4 of us and we want a little bit of everything. We’ve got a loose budget defined within the site, and I can buy more (or less) as necessary to fit it into the actual budget.

I will be writing a full review on Imperfect Foods once we’ve received a little more boxes, so if you’re holding out for more information, I promise, it’ll be here soon!

Plan it (a few days) ahead of time!

It seems so simple, yet it’s something I used to stress myself out over. The old way had me planning for two weeks at a time, without regard to which of the children would be with us at any particular time. If they were dropped off unannounced right at dinner time, I’d have to scramble to make things work.

However… The new system fixes this problem. I plan out my Every Plate dinners when I confirm the next week’s Every Plate box. I plan out my Imperfect dinners when I confirm that week’s Imperfect Produce box. I’m never planned more than a week out, and no one ever goes to bed hungry anymore.*

By planning just a few days at a time, I leave myself room to move things around a little bit without succumbing to analysis-paralysis. I know my Wednesday Every Plate box needs to make 3 meals, and my Friday Imperfect Produce box needs to make three meals. Our seventh day is full of whichever leftovers we have, or — if we don’t have any — a nice fun family meal that we can afford now because the budget is managed.

*Just for my own sanity and clarity, I’d like to make it known that we have never starved, even before this new system was in place, but there were some nights when we had to skimp on dinner and fill up on fruit and dessert after… I’m glad to say that fruits and desserts have both fallen back to their old “bonus” positions and are no longer a way to make ends meet.

Everything is connected.

Although these areas might seem separate, the truth is, they all factor in together. By making room in the budget, I’ve got the extra money to splurge on meal kits. These meal kits make planning dinner easier, which makes me more likely to prep in advance… which leaves more room in my schedule for the things we want to do (which we can afford to do because of a well-managed budget). It’s all connected, and each thing makes the others easier.

Of course, there’s still a lot of time left in 2020, and I’m sure it won’t be smooth sailing the whole way… But having a solid system for streamlining will definitely help avoid any drastic pitfalls.

What tricks and systems are you putting in place to manage your year easier? Let me know in the comments!

Type A Tuesday

Artful Agenda Review: Is it worth the subscription price?

Posted on January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 by Babz

I’m still on the lookout for my perfect planner solution for 2020, and I’m sure some of you other planner perfectionists are, too. Since I’ve had such a hard time finding my planner peace, I decided to give digital planning a try. It’s never really worked for me in the past, but none of my past solutions has been working particularly well this year either, so it was worth giving it a shot.

The digital planning solution I found is called Artful Agenda, a subscription app-and-website combo that promises to combine everything you love about digital planning with the beauty of paper planning. I’m on a mission to simplify my life — could Artful Agenda be just the program to do that?

Well, the short version is no… but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a good solution for you. Read on to learn about what I loved (and didn’t love!) about Artful Agenda.

What I Loved:

Artful Agenda is beautiful.

This is the ONLY digital planner solution that I’ve found that is as aesthetically pleasing as a paper planner. Multiple layout views mimic what I would find in a paper planner, and you can even adjust your calendar colors so that they are more in line with your aesthetics. (Is it just me or does Google Calendar’s color picker leave a LOT of great colors out?) You even get a few tabs to flip from one view to another.

Motivational quotes.

I’ve used a lot of planners where I didn’t really love the layout, but I loved one of the “something extras” that they put into the layouts. Motivational quotes are a big one for me. Some of my favorite old planners had motivational quotes on either the monthly, the weekly, or the daily pages. Artful Agenda has them in all three spots! Sometimes these spots lag a little bit but that’s minor. Sadly, they don’t show up on the mobile app.

(Reasonably) customizable.

You can change some labels (specifically, “custom list”). This allows you to add one label of your own choosing, which will appear over a checklist section on the daily page. This list does not auto-migrate (I was hoping it would!) but the heading for this section does. I tried to use this as a journal section and it didn’t work out well because it auto-formats as a list… which made it a pain in the ass to then remove the “journal entry” (the text doesn’t automatically wrap around, and the delete button appears at the end of the line).

You can make lists.

These lists can probably function as journal entries if you want to use them as such (although I haven’t checked to see if there’s a limit to how many “lists” you can have, and you can’t change the section title — they’re called lists no matter how you use them). I actually used the list view to create a list of pros and cons that would eventually turn into this blog post. 🙂 I love that I can change from my list page to my actual planner pages and, when I flip back, I’m still in the same list — I do have more than one but I have to manually click out of the one I’m in to pick a new one. I can also see how that might be inconvenient for someone who wants to use the lists pages as diary pages.

Cute “cover” options.

Most are floral and highly feminine, which isn’t really my jam, but if that’s something you’re into you’re going to love it. I do wish there were more options, especially more that weren’t so girly, but it’s nice that they offer the feature in the first place. An easy workaround would be to allow you to upload your own cover; I would love this feature even if the built-in cover options went away. When I was researching, I also learned that there are a few covers you can “unlock” with referrals, but as of this blog post, I haven’t verified this personally.

“Handwriting” choices.

Again, there aren’t many choices, but just the fact that there ARE choices is nice. I would love if we could upload our own fonts, although I understand the programming on that would be a lot to ask for at this price point.

Syncs with the top 3 digital calendar services.

(For those not in the know, that would be Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook.) It also syncs automatically and saves everything (I think!) so that you can effortlessly move from your laptop to your phone or tablet, then back again. Unfortunately, that syncing means that you must be online constantly to use Artful Agenda — there is no offline mode.

Clean interface.

For those who are functional planners, the fact that the design is intuitive and well-labeled is nice. I’d like to be able to refine the layout a little more for my own choosing, but I do understand that at that point I might as well learn how to code and do my own. 🙃

There are stickers!

I actually (briefly) used Trello as a digital planner (which was incredibly inefficient for the way I plan) just because of the ability to use stickers. That being said… there aren’t many stickers available for Artful Agenda, and their use isn’t totally intuitive. I’m bummed that I can’t sticker my lists pages because realistically, that’s where I would use the most stickers. Also, some stickers are premium, which blows because of course the first one I wanted to actually use cost $1. Boo. Emojis, however, are free (on the mobile app and with the Google Chrome extension — not through the planner itself), and that’s something I can’t do in my paper planner.

There’s a two-week free trial.

They ask for your credit/debit card information when you sign up for the trial, but mine lagged out and got an error and it still let me start the trial anyway. I haven’t yet added my debit card back in or found a way to cancel the trial aside from picking a plan from the signup page.

What I Didn’t Love:

Not very customizable.

One of my favorite things about paper planners is that you can choose the page layout that works best for you (even if the planner company doesn’t offer multiple page types, you have the option of buying a different paper planner instead). With Artful Agenda, there’s one layout for each view, and just because you like it in the browser version doesn’t mean you’ll like the same view on the mobile version, I’ve found. I wish the layouts were at least consistent from one to the other, even if I don’t get to choose what the layout is. Hopefully the tablet version will improve this.

Font choices are not great.

Some of the fonts are practically unreadable unless you turn up the size so much that it’s no longer aesthetically pleasing (to me). I understand that this is a personal issue (both aesthetics and readability) and also acknowledge that I should be wearing my glasses when I’m on my computer. Still, it would be nice if there was a better workaround. Update: Can see the fonts better when I wear my glasses. Sigh.

SO MUCH LAG.

It doesn’t hit me as hard on the computer, but on my phone, the app can get practically unusable. Specific instance: When I was trying to do type my notes on mobile, the app lagged out and it ended up adding “listlists” when I typed “lists.” Honestly, if adding stuff on the go is going to piss me off, I’m probably not going to do it. Also, I’ve started to find that not all my changes to my lists are being saved when I switch pages on my laptop; I acknowledge that I switched pages a lot for the purpose of this review, but I’m nervous about what notes I may have lost entirely (and can’t remember already).

Discount price = $4/month or $35/year.

This is more expensive than I typically spend on paper planners (although to be fair I rarely use the whole thing for a full year, so if I paid for and stuck with this exclusively for an entire year it would be cheaper). Also, the paper planner I’m currently drooling over costs about twice this much, so I can’t really complain too much.

Mobile setup leaves a lot to be desired.

Three full screens just for one day? No thanks.

It’s not realistic for me to carry my computer around everywhere (not to mention I’m not the type of person who WOULD lug my computer with me everywhere). And, quite frankly, I’m just not impressed with the mobile app version of Artful Agenda. This is a personal issue, of course, but one worth noting.

If you’re the sort of person who really only uses their paper planner at home, and only infrequently needs to add things on the go, this is probably no issue for you. Likewise, if you’re the type of person who already carries your computer with you everywhere, this would be great because the browser version is gorgeous.

Default view can’t be changed.

Monthly view just isn’t realistic for the way that I plan.

Or at least I can’t find how to change it. For those of us who use the “monthly” view infrequently, we’re going to do a lot of clicking-out just to see the stuff you actually DO use. This is a minor complaint, since with paper and digital I tend to flip between views a lot anyway; I already can’t tell you which view I use the most between day, week, and lists. I just so happen to not use the default very frequently at all. I guess that’ll change if I start using this digital planner more, though.

The handwriting font isn’t consistent through all sections.

Aside from the fact that I really don’t need a whole page for just one hourly event…

The calendar section uses a standard, unchangeable font, which sort of clashes with the font I’ve chosen to mimic handwriting. This, also, is a personal issue; the font used for the calendar DOES match with the font used for labels, and I could just use that same default font for the “handwritten” areas… but if I’m going to mimic the look of a paper planner, I don’t want it to look so “digital.”

No widgets.

I use calendar widgets way more often than I use digital calendars, so any digital calendar that doesn’t offer one is hard for me to pull the trigger on, especially at this price point. I found myself putting the app next to a nearly-full-page schedule widget just so I can actually see what’s on it… and the app with the schedule widget is free and came pre-installed on my phone. If there was a way to have this beautifully-designed calendar widget-ed onto my screen, I would be all over it, but there isn’t one currently.

Overall:

I could see the benefit in being able to set Artful Agenda as your browser’s homepage if you love the look of paper planning but the feel of digital. Even though I don’t know how to change the default view, it really is only a click to get to your day, your week, or your lists — not really that big of a deal. I also know that many planners use their monthly view way more often than I do, so I’m probably not even in the majority here.

If you’re looking for a digital planner to take with you on your phone or tablet, I’d hold out. The current mobile version is incredibly disappointing when compared to the browser version, and it’s inefficient to use the browser version on a phone or tablet. (If you’ve got faster internet than I do, this may be different for you.) The Artful Agenda team has teased the release of a tablet-specific app, too, but as of today that version isn’t released. If it comes out before my trail expires, I’ll update this review.

As it stands right now, I can’t picture myself paying for Artful Agenda. It has a lot of promise for converting someone who plans 100%-paper to a digital planner, or for converting a 100%-digital person to more customized planning, but for me it just doesn’t replace enough of what I love about paper or digital. There are definitely some things that are done very well, but the things I like most about it are done equally well by just a few (free) apps. If you’re trying to downsize your app collection anyway, and don’t mind learning an all-new system that isn’t particularly adaptable, Artful Agenda might be a good solution for you.

Still want to give it a try? Head on over to the Artful Agenda website. Don’t forget to use my referral code RB55004!

Wifey Wednesday

8 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Sign Up for Ibotta

Posted on November 28, 2019March 22, 2020 by Babz

It’s no secret that I love planning and planning-related activities. Generally speaking, these activities aren’t things that make me any money, but usually they make it easier to get through my day (or week) without having a mental breakdown. For the past month, however, our family has been using Ibotta, and I’ve got to say that the extra step has been more than worth it.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ibotta, it’s an app where you can upload your grocery, convenience, or liquor store receipts and receive cash back offers for the products you buy. It only takes a few minutes a week, and the bonuses really do add up. It’s like good old mail-in rebates, but without the stamp or the waiting. Just scan your receipts with your smart phone and you’re good to go.

So, with that being said, here are the top 8 reasons you shouldn’t sign up for Ibotta. (Please note that the contained Ibotta links are referral links, meaning that I get a small incentive if you sign up using my links. You get an incentive, too — extra cash just for being referred by an active member.)

1. You hate free money.

I get it — some people just have way too much money. If that sounds like you, you should probably skip Ibotta, since all they do is give you money for things you were already going to buy anyway. Even if you forget to add the offers you want before you upload your receipt, Ibotta’s algorithms compare the items on your receipt to items they currently have on offer, and recommends the ones that you’re eligible for. Just in case they miss something, they even let you search once you’ve already put in the receipt.

If free money absolutely isn’t your bag, it’s simple enough to think of Ibotta as an investment. For just a few extra minutes each week, you can actually see a return for your consumable goods. That money can then be used to purchase a virtual gift card (to give someone else that free money you hate) or even just banked up to see how much free money you’ve avoided. Why not?

2. You don’t have a smartphone.

People without smartphones are rare, but they do exist. Just a few days ago, as a matter of fact, I tried to help my aunt sign up for Ibotta, but she only has a flip phone and a tablet. Sadly, the tablet wasn’t compatible with the Ibotta app, so we ended up not finishing the signup process. It was a bummer for both of us, since we definitely don’t fit in the “I hate free money” category.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a workaround for this particular problem (but if you know one, please fill me in!). For everyone else, though, keep reading to see if Ibotta makes sense for your lifestyle.

3. You’re opposed to the idea of helping others… even if you get something out of it.

I tend to do my best to help others when I can, especially if it’s free or if I get something in exchange. I can understand that not everyone feels the same way, though. Some people really, really don’t like to see others succeed, even if helping someone else succeed also benefits them personally. I don’t get it, but I can understand.

If helping yourself earn extra money isn’t enough incentive to help your friends (e.g. me personally) earn a little referral credit, you could always get someone else to set it up for you. Does it really count as helping out if you outsource? I think not. And you can even pay this third-party person with gift cards that you earn from your own shopping trips.

4. You actually prefer the store brands — it’s not even about saving money.

Hey, I definitely get this one. Most of the time, I buy store brands out of convenience or necessity; it’s cheaper to buy an off-brand and if the ingredients are basically the same, who cares? But there are a few items I deliberately get the store brand just because the ingredients aren’t the same. (For example, why are Great Value marshmallows the only ones widely available that don’t contain artificial colors? Marshmallows are white. They shouldn’t have blue dyes in them.)

For most people, however, a well-earned cash back offer could be all that stands between the store brand and the name brand that everyone will recognize immediately. Ibotta gives you those cash back offers so you can feel good about going after the national brands. And, they even have “any brand” offers from time to time, so if you really want the bagged cereals and loose produce, you can still get them and get paid for it.

5. Planning a shopping trip ahead of time is so dang hard.

With two kids, planning anything can be a challenge. I definitely spent many a shopping trip just haphazardly finding a bunch of ingredients that I thought I could do something with. Often, I’d have to run out for a second trip just to get the rest of the ingredients that I couldn’t remember during my one-hour reprieve from the kids.

Now that I make up menu plans over a week ahead of time, checking Ibotta offers before I make my grocery trip just makes sense. It takes maybe an extra ten minutes, and saves me a ton of time (and money!) when I actually get to the grocery store. The money I stack up in the app puts me a little bit closer to creating the holidays I actually want to create for my kids… And it takes almost nothing to do.

6. Someone else buys your groceries, so you don’t need to worry about it.

For much of my adult life, I wasn’t the one doing the grocery shopping. I lived with family or roommates who received government assistance, so it was easier to let them get the groceries on their food stamp card, and I’d just eat whatever was leftover after they made their meals. It was mutually beneficial, because they’d have my few dollars of cash in their pockets, and I’d have food for next to nothing.

With Ibotta, however, it doesn’t matter who buys the groceries — you can still get cash back for the receipts. We’ve even tested out whether you can share receipts between multiple accounts, and as of this post, you can. We’ve shared the same receipts across three accounts at a time, each of us getting the money (although it seems that not all offers can be claimed on all accounts). If you’ve got enough people to share receipts with, much of your shopping trip could be completely free.

7. Food tastes better when it’s expensive.

It’s a well-known trick at expensive restaurants: Bulk up the price to an unreasonable amount, sometimes as much as $5 per bite, and people will flock to your restaurant so that they can show off their elite tastes and their grand paychecks. There’s an assumption that, if the food is expensive, it must be higher quality.

But, quite frankly, that’s not true. A free candy bar that you got trick-or-treating tastes every bit as good as the one you dropped $1.50 on. Ibotta rolls with this offer and motivates you to try new brands you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, just because of the price. I’ve actually gotten quite a few gourmet products which — once the cash back is factored in — come out to cheaper than their “average” counterparts. And you know what? Gourmet ingredients taste amazing, and when they’re cheaper, you can buy more of them.

8. You don’t want “The Man” knowing what you’ve bought.

I’m not going to pretend that I fully understand this one, but there are some people out there who really, really don’t want someone else knowing the intimate details of what they buy. With a little extra effort, even these people can be satisfied. After all, there’s nothing stopping you from running two separate transactions — one for Ibotta offers, and a second for the things you buy that aren’t on offer. Receipts these days already have identity-theft-protection features, such as omitting most of the card numbers for the cards you’ve pulled, and using store-specific codes for some items so that they can’t be easily identified.

Here’s the thing, though… There’s no motivation for Ibotta to use your purchase history against you. Even if you don’t take the time to make separate Ibotta and non-Ibotta transactions, you can rest assured that your information is only being used to get the best offers for your lifestyle and your family. Don’t upload any receipts that contain personally identifying information, if you’re concerned. If you pay with cash, they don’t even receive the name of the purchaser. It couldn’t be simpler.

Still on the fence?

Ibotta has been a lifesaver for our family. We’ve been able to earn an extra $60 this month just from buying the things that we were going to buy anyway, and we’ve even been enticed to try some new things just because I had an offer to get the ingredients for cheaper. We bought pizza rolls for the first time in months because the cash back offer knocked the price down enough to fit it into our budget. We bought wine for us and for family members because the cash back offer had an incentive for claiming multiple times within a set time period.

I’ll probably never (willingly) go back to life without Ibotta, and hopefully I never have to. Check it out for yourself and I’m pretty sure you’ll be hooked, too.