“Help! My wee li’l ducks are not in a row!” — Hopefully you find what you’re looking for here. If not, reach out at @4ducksbudget, or our contact form.
Most budget apps assume your income is steady and that you’ll link your bank account. 4Ducks doesn’t. It’s built for real life — bills that aren’t monthly and a paycheck that changes — and it never connects to your bank. The whole app is organized around four simple ideas we call the four ducks: know what you make and spend, always be saving, work toward freedom from debt, and pay on time.
No — 4Ducks never links to your bank. You tell it about your bills and income, and it does the math. Your information stays on your device, so there’s nothing for a data breach to leak.
Because 4Ducks plans around your typical month, not just this one. Bills that hit once or twice a year — insurance, registration, annual subscriptions — get spread into a small monthly amount, so a big one never blindsides you. Even in a month when nothing big is due, the app sets some of that money aside. It’s the honest long-run picture, not just what happens to land in a single month.
When you add an expense, you set how often it’s due — monthly, yearly, every few months, even every few years. 4Ducks spreads the cost into a steady monthly amount, so a $600 twice-a-year bill simply shows up as $100 a month. That way the lumpy months don’t catch you off guard.
It’s the money you’re quietly holding back each month to cover the bills that aren’t monthly. When the annual or semi-annual bill finally arrives, the cash is already there. Think of it as paying those big bills a little at a time, every month, instead of all at once.
It’s how much you can save in a normal month — your income minus what your expenses really cost per month, including the slice set aside for non-monthly bills. It’s the number you can count on month after month, not just when nothing big happens to be due.
Yes — that’s exactly who it’s built for. Instead of one fixed salary, 4Ducks works from a baseline: a lower monthly income you can reliably count on. You log what you actually earn, and the app plans around the income you can depend on — treating anything above it as a bonus you can put toward debt or savings.
Right on the Home screen, tap “Got paid?” and enter what you received — each amount goes into your income log. 4Ducks uses your history to settle on a baseline you can reliably plan around, and you can review it anytime under “View income log”.
Yes. The quickest way is right when you’re adding an expense — tap “＋ New” in the category picker to create one on the spot. To add, rename, or remove your categories later, go to “Settings” > “Manage budgets”, open the budget, and tap “Manage categories”.
4Ducks isn’t that kind of app. It’s not for one-off purchases like a gas receipt — it’s for recurring expenses, things like bills and the amounts you budget for things like gas and eating out. So you might budget $200/month for gas, for instance.
Yes. You can keep separate budgets — say, one for your household and one for a side business — and switch between them. You’ll find budget management in Settings.
Add your debts — balance, interest rate, and minimum payment — and 4Ducks works out the date you’ll be debt-free if you keep paying. Put any spare money toward them and watch that date move closer. You’ll find it on the Plan tab.
Both throw your spare money at one debt at a time. Avalanche targets the highest interest rate first, so you pay the least interest overall. Snowball targets the smallest balance first, so you clear a whole debt sooner for the motivation. 4Ducks shows you the date and the interest for each, so you can pick what keeps you going.
Tell 4Ducks what you’re saving for and how much it costs, and it shows you the date you can afford it at your current pace — or how much to set aside each month to hit a date you pick. Goals draw from what you can sustainably save, so the date is honest, not wishful.
4Ducks can remind you before a bill is due so nothing slips by. If you’re not seeing reminders, check that notifications are turned on for 4Ducks in your phone’s settings, and that reminders are enabled in the app’s Settings.
In Settings, export your budget to a .4dbudget file. You can save it somewhere safe or send it to yourself — it’s a good habit to do this now and then.
In Settings, export your budget to a .4dbudget file and save or send it to yourself. On the new phone, open that file and import it. Your budget lives on your device, so exporting is also the best way to keep a backup in case you ever lose or replace your phone.
Your budget is stored on your device, so deleting the app or losing the phone would take it with them. That’s the tradeoff for keeping your data private and off the cloud — so export a .4dbudget backup now and then, and you’ll always be able to restore it.
Yes. 4Ducks follows your phone’s language and is fully available in English and Spanish.
Yes. 4Ducks follows your phone’s appearance, switching between light and dark automatically.
4Ducks is available for iPhone and Android.
Reach out through our contact form and we’ll help. If something went wrong in the app, you can also look under “Settings” > “Show error logs”, which can help us track down the problem.