Our goal
Make planning your pay as normal as getting paid. That’s the whole idea, and this page is where we keep score.
Payday Planners so far, of the first 100.
25 on the app and web, 1 with the spreadsheet. The goal: 1,000,000.
The count is real and live: people who have signed up on iPhone, Android or the web, plus people using the free spreadsheet. We never round it up.
Why the next pay
You don’t have to fix your money, start a budget or track every coffee. You just plan the next pay. Then the next one.
The missing lesson
School, skills, experience, pay rises: so much of growing up is about earning more. Planning what we earn mostly gets left to us. Money is in the school curriculum, but not as a subject of its own, and only 1 in 3 students say they’ve learnt about budgeting at school.
So we figure it out as we go: pay lands, bills go out, and whatever’s left just goes. Back to Black makes the missing lesson practical. One pay at a time.
Ecstra Foundation 2025 survey of 891 students aged 10–17, as reported by EducationHQ (October 2025).
Our story
I’ve had more than 250 paydays over ten years without missing one.
I was building a career, getting pay rises, buying a home and starting a family. I had a business degree majoring in economics, and from the outside, things were going well.
But there was something I hadn’t figured out.
I wasn’t making the most of the money I earned. My bills were growing alongside my income, everyday costs kept adding up, and I was using interest-free credit cards and buy now, pay later more than I wanted to.
It was easy to put something off until the next pay. Split a purchase into four payments. Deal with it later. Except the next pay already had its own commitments waiting.
I started asking myself a simple question:
How could I be earning consistently for ten years and still not have a proper plan for the money I worked so hard to earn?
The truth was, I had plenty of goals but not always a plan to get there.
I’ve always wanted to travel around the world. I want to pay off my home loan, give my son a great start in life and build a better future for my family. I also want the freedom to explore ideas, build businesses and make the most of the opportunities ahead.
But wanting something and having a plan to achieve it are two different things.
I realised I needed to change the way I approached payday. Not through complicated budgets or tracking every little purchase, but by starting with something much simpler: planning one pay at a time.
I wanted a simple tool that would help me see what was coming, decide what my next pay needed to cover and put money towards the things that mattered to me.
Before payday, I plan my upcoming bills, expenses, repayments and goals. I decide what needs to be set aside and what I can actually spend.
When payday arrives, I move the money through my own bank account, tick off my plan and see the progress I’ve made.
Just a simple way to plan the money I already earn.
I want my son to grow up in a home where talking about money is normal. Where saving for something, planning a purchase and understanding what things cost are everyday conversations.
I also know I’m not alone in finding this difficult.
Borrowing money, splitting payments and buying things before we have the money to pay for them have become incredibly easy. These services can have their place, but they can also make it easy to push today’s decisions onto tomorrow’s pay.
I want to help make planning more accessible, affordable and enjoyable.
A holiday, a home loan, a family expense or something as simple as a new pair of shoes.
Big goals and small goals both start somewhere.
I’m not sharing this because I’ve figured everything out. I’m building better habits myself, working towards my own goals and learning along the way.
Through Back to Black, I’ll share practical tools, useful guides and honest updates about what I’m trying, what works and what doesn’t.
We’ll talk about everyday money decisions, negotiating better deals with banks, preparing for big expenses, paying down debt and making room for the things we want to do.
My ambition is to help one million people plan their next pay, for free.
I know that’s a big goal. But every big goal starts with a plan, and every plan starts somewhere.
Let’s get back to black, stay in the black and make more of the money we earn. One pay at a time.
How it stays free
Back to Black helps you plan the money you earn, prepare for what’s coming, and feel more in control before your next payday.
The core tools to help you build better money habits will stay free.
As Back to Black grows, we’ll introduce optional paid extras to give you more ways to manage your money. They could include sharing plans with family, extra planning tools, and new features shaped by feedback from our community.
The essentials will stay free. Our goal is to make planning your money easier for everyone, not to put better money habits behind a paywall.
Our promise: help you make more of the money you earn, one pay at a time.
The road to a million
October 2026: Back to Black 3.0, rebuilt to do one job, plan your next pay. We’ll share every milestone here.
Join us
Hear about each milestone first