Learning Group Guide
This guide is for participants assigned to the Learning Group. It explains the 28-day Budget Coach study. For shared app help, read the General Guide.
Your Four Study Weeks
The study lasts 28 days and has four personal seven-day weeks. Week 1 begins when your required pre-study forms are completed. Your weeks may begin on any weekday; they do not need to start on Monday.
Budget Coach shows your current week, exact date range, study start date, and next weekly step. Use these dates rather than calendar-week labels elsewhere in the app.
You will complete:
- Pre-study forms before Week 1.
- A weekly budget step and feedback during the study.
- A midpoint check-in after Week 2.
- A final check-in after Week 4 and 28 complete days.
Study tasks in the notification list show the next action when one is due. Device reminders are optional; the in-app task remains available even if you turn phone notifications off.
Budget Coach
Open Budget Coach from the bottom navigation. It offers one optional Weekly budget step at a time, such as reviewing your weekly summary, recurring costs, an optional spending pattern, a personal savings goal, or your budget reflection.
Each step is optional. Adapt it, skip it, or ignore it if it does not fit your situation. It never asks you to set a fixed cut or amount.
- Use this step records that you want to try the step.
- Not now dismisses it for now.
- Reflect on this opens the optional reflection journal.
- Stop step ends an active step after confirmation.
- Earlier accepted steps remain in history as stopped or replaced and can be activated again when appropriate.
If you start a new step while another one is active, KakeiBuddy asks for confirmation before replacing it.
Using, stopping, replacing, or reflecting on a Coach step never automatically changes your goals, transactions, savings target, or profile. It also never creates a challenge or awards points, streaks, badges, levels, or rewards.
Weekly Feedback And Check-Ins
When a study week ends, complete How did last week go? before the next weekly step can appear. The app saves a privacy-safe weekly outcome automatically before this feedback; there is no extra financial form to complete.
After Week 2 feedback, the midpoint check-in is required before Week 3. After Week 4 feedback and the full 28 days, complete the final check-in. If you miss a reminder, open the notification bell or Budget Coach when you next use the app.
Budgeting does not require daily logging. Your own recorded entries may make the overview more useful, but there is no requirement to add a transaction every day.
Earlier-Pilot Restart
Most participants will never see this. If KakeiBuddy shows a dedicated updated weekly study restart screen, follow that screen rather than resetting or reinstalling the app.
The restart keeps your account identity, saved transactions, wallets, categories, recurring entries, country, currency, and data mode. It archives the earlier pilot study run and starts a separate formal study run. You may be asked to renew consent and complete the updated study assessment.
Need Help?
Use Profile > Settings > Support > Report an Issue or the KakeiBuddy Tester Bug Report Form. Include your participant code, but do not share passwords, tokens, raw transaction details, or screenshots containing sensitive financial information.