I still remember the exact moment I realized I was broke. Not "I can't afford a vacation" broke or "I'll skip the appetizer" broke. I mean the kind of broke where your debit card gets declined at a grocery store and the cashier looks at you with that polite pity that stings worse than any lecture.
I was standing in the checkout line on a Tuesday afternoon. I had a cart full of vegetables, a bag of coffee, and a growing pit in my stomach. My account said $14.62. The total was $63. I put the coee back. Then I put the vegetables back too.
What made it worse was that I had a decent job. I was making money. Real money. Not enough to feel rich, but enough that being broke made no sense. And yet every month, by the 20th, I was scraping. By the 28th, I was panicking. By the 3rd, I was promising myself I'd do better.
I wasn't lazy. I wasn't dumb. I was just leaking money in a hundred small, invisible ways I couldn't see. And the worst part? Every budgeting app I tried assumed I already knew where it was going. None of them taught me how to stop the leak.