Getting Started with MBA

My Budgeting Apprentice is a debt strategy tool built around one problem most budget apps ignore: promotional APR windows. Here's why that matters, and how to get set up in about 10 minutes.

Why MBA

The 0% promo that isn't free

Many credit cards offer 0% promotional APR for 12–21 months — on purchases, balance transfers, or store financing. The catch most people discover too late: many of these offers use deferred interest. If even a small balance remains when the promo expires, the card charges interest retroactively on the entire original balance — as if the 0% period never happened. A $3,000 purchase with $200 left at expiry can trigger hundreds of dollars in back-dated interest overnight.

Generic budgeting apps don't model this. They see a balance and an APR, not a countdown. They can't tell you that paying an extra $150/month toward one specific card for the next four months saves you more than any avalanche or snowball ordering would.

MBA reads the promo windows off your actual statements and sequences your payoff around them — making sure high-balance promos are cleared before their expiry dates, then falling back to classic avalanche or snowball ordering for everything else.

In short: your budgeting app tracks where money went. MBA tracks which balances have a fuse lit under them, and how to put the fuses out in the right order.

In this guide

  1. Download a PDF statement from your bank
  2. Upload the statement to MBA
  3. No supported bank? Use the Excel template
  4. Get your SimpleFIN token
  5. Connect your bank in MBA
  6. Generate your payoff plan
  7. Read the dashboard
Step 1

Download a PDF statement from your bank

Your promotional APR windows and expiry dates only appear on your statement PDFs — live balance sync (covered in Step 3) can't see them. Uploading a statement is how MBA tracks when your 0% promo ends and how much you need to pay off before it does.

MBA currently reads statements from these banks:

Bank Cards PDF parsing
Wells Fargo Reflect, Active Cash, Autograph ✓ Supported
Bank of America Customized Cash, Premium Rewards, Travel Rewards ✓ Supported
Discover it Cash Back, it Chrome, it Miles ✓ Supported
Citi Simplicity, Double Cash, American Airlines ✓ Supported (BalTrnOffer layout, incl. OCR)
Chase, AmEx, others — Coming soon

To download a statement, log into your bank's website and navigate to Statements or Documents. Download your most recent statement as a PDF. The file name doesn't matter.

[Screenshot: Wells Fargo online portal — Statements section with a PDF download link highlighted] Example shown for Wells Fargo — your bank's layout will differ
Use a complete statement PDF, not a summary page. The promo APR table is usually on the last few pages. A "quick view" or transaction export won't contain it.
Step 2

Upload the statement to MBA

From the Upload page (or Step 2 of the onboarding wizard), drop your PDF into the upload area, then click Upload Statement.

[Screenshot: MBA onboarding Step 2 — upload area with a file selected, filename visible]

MBA extracts your promotional APR, expiry date, and promotional balance from the PDF automatically. You'll see a confirmation showing what was found.

[Screenshot: statement result page — showing parsed promo APR and expiry date for the card] Example: "0% promo APR · expires Aug 10, 2026 · $6,500 balance"

You can upload multiple statements — one per card. Each upload adds promo data for that card without overwriting the others.

Tip: You can also upload statements later from the main screen — you don't have to do it during onboarding. Come back any time a new statement arrives.
No supported bank?

Use the Excel template instead

If your bank isn't in the supported list yet — or you'd rather not upload a statement at all — you can still generate a full payoff plan. On the Upload page, download the Excel template, fill in one row per card (balance, APR, minimum payment, and any promo APR + expiry date you know from your statement), and upload the completed file.

MBA treats Excel-entered cards exactly like parsed ones: promo windows are tracked, countdowns run, and the plan sequences around expiry dates. The only difference is that you update the numbers by hand instead of MBA reading them for you.

Note: This is the fallback path, not the main one. If your bank is supported, PDF upload is less work and less error-prone — the spreadsheet exists so nobody is locked out while parser coverage grows.
Step 3

Get your SimpleFIN token

MBA uses SimpleFIN to pull live balances from your bank without storing your bank username or password. SimpleFIN acts as a read-only bridge — it can see your balances and recent transactions, but cannot move money.

To get started, visit beta-bridge.simplefin.org and click Create a SimpleFIN token.

[Screenshot: SimpleFIN homepage — highlight the "Create token" button] beta-bridge.simplefin.org

You'll be asked to log in with your bank credentials — this happens on SimpleFIN's site, not in MBA. MBA never sees your bank password. After completing the bank login, SimpleFIN gives you a setup token — a long string of characters you'll paste into MBA in the next step.

[Screenshot: SimpleFIN after auth — the setup token displayed, ready to copy] Copy the full token string
Tip: SimpleFIN costs $1.50/year per connected institution — paid directly to SimpleFIN, not MBA. If you connect two banks, that's $3/year total. You'll be prompted to pay on their site during setup.
Step 4

Connect your bank in MBA

When you first log in, MBA shows you the onboarding wizard. Paste your SimpleFIN setup token into the field in Step 1 and click Connect.

[Screenshot: MBA onboarding Step 1 — token input field with a token pasted in] The Connect button is to the right of the input

After a few seconds you'll see a green confirmation message. MBA will sync your balances in the background — this usually takes under a minute.

[Screenshot: MBA onboarding Step 1 — green "Connected" confirmation state]
Note: The setup token is one-time use. Once connected, MBA stores a permanent access URL (encrypted) so it can sync without you doing anything. Balances refresh automatically every 6 hours.
Step 5

Generate your payoff plan

From the home screen, enter your total monthly debt payment budget — the total amount you're able to put toward all credit cards combined each month. Then choose a payoff strategy:

  • Avalanche — pays off the highest-interest card first. Minimizes total interest paid.
  • Snowball — pays off the lowest-balance card first. Faster early wins, more motivating for some people.
[Screenshot: MBA home screen — monthly budget input field, strategy dropdown, Generate Plan button]

Click Generate Plan. MBA produces a month-by-month schedule showing which card gets the extra payment each month, how much interest you'll pay in total, and when each card reaches zero.

[Screenshot: plan results page — table showing months, card name, payment amount, remaining balance]
About the promo column: Cards with active promotional APRs are flagged in the plan. MBA sequences payments to ensure high-balance promos are paid off before they expire — even if that card isn't the "next" in strict avalanche order.
Step 6

Read the dashboard

After generating a plan, click Dashboard to see your full card picture at a glance.

[Screenshot: full dashboard — several cards visible with countdown timers and progress bars]

Each card shows:

  • Current balance and available credit (from SimpleFIN sync)
  • Promo APR countdown — days until your promotional rate expires
  • Payoff progress bar — how far you are toward paying off that card

The countdown timer changes color based on urgency:

  • Green — more than 90 days remaining. No action needed now.
  • Orange — 30–90 days remaining. Start planning your next move.
  • Red — under 30 days. Act immediately or the rate resets to the regular APR.
[Screenshot: dashboard close-up — one card in red (< 30 days), one orange (< 90 days), one green] The color coding is the fastest way to spot what needs attention
Deferred interest warning: Some promotional offers (common on store cards) charge retroactive interest on the full original balance if you don't pay it off completely before the promo ends — not just the remaining balance. MBA flags these cards so you know to treat them differently.

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