A practical playbook
Run your money as a conversation.
Keep the honest ledger. Stop talking to it like a machine. This is a plain-language guide to running your household money by talking to it — using Grist and Claude — instead of hunting for the right cell.
One book, one price. No course, no upsell, no coaching call.
›how much can I spend on food this month?
You’ve got about £310 of the £750 left, and roughly three weeks to go — so ~£100/week keeps you comfortable.
›just spent £42 at the big Tesco
Logged to July’s grocery pot. That’s £248 left. Read it back to be sure?
›can I justify a new pair of headphones?
That reads personal rather than household — want it in the £750 pot, or kept separate?
Why this exists
Most budgets die by March.
Not because you’re undisciplined — because a spreadsheet demands you meet it on its terms. The right value, in the right cell, every time. Logging a shop is fiddly, so you batch it, then forget, then guess. The problem isn’t you. It’s friction.
This playbook removes the friction by putting a conversation in front of your finances. You keep a proper, structured ledger — nothing woolly — but you interact with it the way you’d talk to a sensible friend who’s good with numbers. It can even push back: log the groceries, but flag the games console as personal before it lands in the household pot.
How it works
Three well-behaved parts.
No fragile hack. Grist is the ledger that remembers. Claude is the coach you talk to. MCP is the open standard that safely bridges them. Swap any one part and the other two still make sense.
What’s inside
A whole working system, start to finish.
Nine chapters, plus a glossary, cheat sheet and sources. Everything is copy-paste and explained — no developer required.
- The spreadsheet problemwhy friction kills budgets
- The three moving partsGrist · Claude · MCP
- What conversational buys youthe texture change
- Method A — self-hostedthe private way
- Method B — Grist onlinethe easy way, on your phone
- An honest comparisonprivacy vs convenience
- The automation anglethe receipt pipeline
- Habits that make it stickthe disciplines that last
- Optional bolt-onsopen banking, OCR, voice
- The copy-paste rulebookthe actual standing instructions
- Appendixglossary, cheat sheet, sources
- Length~40 pages · about an afternoon
- FormatPDF & EPUB · yours to keep
- Price£12 (about $15)
Two honest setups
Private, or easy. Your call — and we show the trade.
Method A — self-hosted
Run Grist yourself on a machine you control, wired to Claude Code in your terminal. Your ledger never leaves your disk; only the slice you ask about is sent for an answer.
Method B — Grist online
Make an account, click one link to connect Claude, and manage your money from your phone at the checkout. Less private, far less setup. The book helps you choose on purpose.
The honest bit
What most pages leave out.
On your data
No AI setup can promise “nothing ever leaves” — the whole point is that the model reads your numbers to answer you. The book is precise about exactly what leaves your machine, and when, so you can choose with open eyes.
On this purchase
There’s no course at the end of this. There’s a £12 book if you want it, and that’s the whole business. No upsell, no “module two”, no Discord you have to join.
Every technical claim in the book is footnoted to a source you can check yourself. Software moves — we tell you which bits to re-verify before you rely on them.
This is for you if
You like a real, honest ledger but hate the admin of keeping it.
You’d run a tight monthly pot better if something answered “can I afford this?” in a sentence.
You care where your financial data rests, and want to decide it deliberately.
It’s not for you if
You want a bank-linked app that ingests every transaction automatically and thinks for you.
You’re after get-rich or investment tips. This is money admin, not advice.
You want zero setup — not even a couple of accounts and a one-time walkthrough.
Who wrote this
Who wrote this
Joseph Kelly
I built this to run my own household’s money — a real budget, a real debt-payoff plan — and wrote down exactly how it works, caveats and all. I’m not a financial adviser and I don’t play one online. This is the honest, sourced version of a thing I actually use.
Get the book
£12, yours to keep.
- The full playbookPDF & EPUB
- Yours to keepno subscription
- Every claimfootnoted to a source
Secure checkout via Payhip · VAT handled · instant download
Not for you? Email within 14 days and I’ll refund you — no questions.
Buying direct gets you both PDF and EPUB, and a bigger slice reaches me than Amazon’s cut. Prefer Kindle? It’s on Amazon too. No upsell on the next page either way.
Not ready to buy?
Take the one-page rulebook, free.
The house rules the whole system runs on — the gatekeeper checks, “change inputs, not formulas”, count income only when it lands. Genuinely useful on its own. It’s a free one-page rulebook and an email list you can leave anytime — no spam.
One email with the PDF, then the occasional honest note. That’s it.
Straight answers
Questions, answered plainly.
Is there a course or upsell after this?
No. It’s a £12 book and that’s the entire transaction — no “advanced module”, no coaching call, no next tier. The free rulebook and email list are the only other things on offer, and they stay free.
Why buy this when I could ask Claude to walk me through Grist for free?
You could — and you’d spend an evening stitching together scattered docs, guessing which settings are current, and hoping the setup advice is right. The £12 buys the decided version: the two setups worked out, the privacy trade-offs spelled out, every technical claim footnoted to a source, and the house rules that keep it alive. It’s the shortcut past the trial and error.
Is this financial advice?
No. It’s a practical guide to money admin — a system for logging and understanding your own numbers. It doesn’t tell you what to invest in or buy. Do your own research; consult a professional for your situation.
Do I need to be technical?
No. Where a command appears, it’s copy-paste and explained. There’s an easy, no-terminal setup (Method B) that works entirely on your phone.
Do I need anything besides the book?
Yes — a Claude subscription. Claude Code (the private setup) isn’t on the free tier, and the free tier’s message limits are too tight for daily money-logging, so in practice you’ll want Claude Pro (about $20/month). So budget the real cost as this £12 book once, plus that subscription ongoing — the book is upfront about it. Everything else (Grist, the MCP bridge) is free or open-source.
Can I use ChatGPT instead of Claude?
Partly. ChatGPT speaks MCP too, so it can connect to hosted Grist — but not the private self-hosted setup, and on an individual Plus/Pro account its connectors are currently read-only, so you could ask about your budget but not log spend. Since logging is half the point, this book documents the Claude setup — it’s what I built and tested, and it does both. The ideas carry over to any MCP assistant; the exact steps here are Claude’s.
Is my financial data safe?
The book is honest about this rather than hand-wavy: it shows exactly what stays on your machine, what leaves, and when — and gives you a fully private, self-hosted option if that matters to you.
What if it’s not for me?
If it’s not for you, email me within 14 days and I’ll refund you — no questions, no form to fill in. I’d rather that than have your £12 and your grudge.