A bill payoff tracker works best when every dollar you log visibly shrinks a real bill, starting with the smallest one so you get a full “that bill’s covered” win as fast as possible. I built The Side Hustle Garden around that loop, a gamified income tracker where your bills are the thing you grow. You log a side hustle payment, it automatically goes toward your smallest monthly bill, and a garden grows as your bills get covered.
Quick disclosure before we go further: The Side Hustle Garden is mine. I built it and I run it. The core app is free, and there’s a Pro tier I’ll get to. This is me showing you the tracker I log my own side income in, not a pitch dressed up as a review.
My side income kept vanishing
I have a few side hustles going at any given time: my blogs and their affiliate income, Amazon Influencer payouts, and the little apps I build and sell. Every payment used to land in my regular account and instantly blend in. I earned it, and then it was just… gone into the pile. I never saw what any of it actually did.
That’s the problem this app exists to fix: making each one visibly DO something.
Smallest bill first, on purpose
The mechanic: you list your monthly bills, and everything your side hustles bring in goes toward covering them, smallest bill first.
Smallest first is a choice, and it’s the whole point. Big bills take forever to cover and that’s discouraging. A small bill gets fully covered fast, and “my phone bill got paid by my blog” is a real win you can feel. It’s the debt-snowball idea aimed at your monthly bills: momentum beats math, because momentum is what keeps you hustling.
That’s the same reason I shrink a habit instead of skipping it on a bad day. A small win that actually lands beats a big one you never start.
What happens when you log a payment?
Here’s the loop in practice. An affiliate payout lands, I log it, and the app puts it toward the smallest uncovered bill. When a bill gets fully covered, that’s a win on the board, the garden grows, and the next payment starts working on the next bill.
The garden fills in as the month’s bills get covered, and the month-by-month history shows the longer game: what your side income covered in March, in April, in May. Small payments stop feeling small when you can see three months of covered bills behind them.
I log my own side income in this thing today, every source I named up top. The amounts are my business, but the loop is exactly what I described. Payment in, bill down, garden up.
What is free and what does Pro add?
Everything I’ve walked through so far is free, with no cap on how many bills you add. Pro is for looking ahead and getting your numbers out.
| Plan | What you get |
|---|---|
| Free | Your bills, income logging, the garden, and month-by-month history. |
| App Hub Pro: $7 a month, $59 a year, or $119 once | A 6-month cash flow forecast, CSV export, and recap emails. One Pro unlocks all five of my apps. |
If the momentum thing is what hooks you, I built the same loop into Dopamine Dealer Habits for daily habits instead of bills. Same Pro unlocks both.
What I’d flag before you try it
It tracks, it doesn’t move money. It’s not a bank, it doesn’t connect to your accounts, and it doesn’t pay your bills. You type in what you earned and it keeps score. Your money never touches the app.
You need side income for it to matter. This app is built for people with money coming in beyond the main paycheck. If that’s not you yet, the app can’t do its thing. Side income counts broadly, though: a car you sold, survey money, a birthday check. Reselling what you already own is the easiest first source if you don’t have a hustle yet.
None of this is financial advice. It’s a scoreboard for your side income. Which bills you actually pay first is a call for you, and a financial pro if you have one.
Who is this bill payoff tracker for?
This is for the budgeting and debt-snowball crowd with any kind of side income: the person with a hustle or three who earns real money a little at a time and never sees what it adds up to. If you like the snowball feeling of whole bills falling one at a time, this points that feeling at your monthly bills and puts a garden on top.
I wrote up the same app from the income side over on Seeding Serendipity, if watching your side hustle money add up is more your thing than watching bills fall.
A bill payoff tracker only works if every dollar you add changes something you can see. That’s the whole design here: money in, a bill visibly down, a garden that fills in behind it.
Plant your first payment
List your bills, log the next bit of side income that hits your account, and watch your first bill bloom. Free, no card needed.
Got bills that only come once or twice a year? The annual bills planner on Admin Arcade turns those into one monthly number you can add as a bill. And if a few of the subscriptions you pay for are ones you keep meaning to cancel, here’s how I track the subscriptions I keep meaning to cancel.
The Side Hustle Garden is part of my App Hub, where the rest of my little apps live. If you want more of my origin-story builds, here’s another tool I built to fix a problem I kept hitting, the daily energy log I built to find out what charges me, and the rest live in Digital Products.
Frequently asked questions
How does a bill payoff tracker work?
You list your recurring bills, log income against them, and the tracker shows which bills that income has covered. The Side Hustle Garden applies whatever you log to your smallest uncovered bill first, so you get complete covered-bill wins as quickly as possible.
Why pay the smallest bill first instead of the biggest?
Momentum. A small bill gets fully covered fast, and that first win makes it easier to keep logging. The debt snowball works the same way: it ignores interest rates and goes smallest balance first so the wins come early.
Does The Side Hustle Garden pay my bills?
No. It’s a tracker, not a bank. You pay your bills the way you always do and log your side income in the app. It keeps score of what your side income covered, it never touches your money.
What counts as side income?
Anything beyond your main paycheck: freelance gigs, affiliate income, marketplace sales, creator payouts, even one-off money like selling something you own. If it’s extra and you can log it, it counts.
Is The Side Hustle Garden free?
Yes. The whole tracker is free, no card needed. App Hub Pro is the paid add-on at $7 a month, $59 a year, or $119 once, and it adds a 6-month cash flow forecast, CSV export, and recap emails.
A tool I built
Side Hustle Garden
Log every side hustle payment and watch it knock out your monthly bills, smallest first.
Plant your first dollar →I run an affiliate program on the tools I build. Approved affiliates earn 20% on what their referrals pay, for up to a year. US only for now. See the program →
