About the Creator
The story behind Dad's Budget Tracker, and the person who maintains it.
Dedicated to my dad, John Cook
Hi, I'm Jason Cook. This site is dedicated to my dad, John Cook.
My dad was born and raised in Violin (pronounced va-lin, not like the instrument), South Dakota. His parents — my grandparents, Kenneth and Christine — raised him and his two sisters, Carolyn and Janice, on a farm. He was the middle child.
Dad wanted to be a mechanic. Grandma said no. "You're going to learn a trade." He went to Nettleton College in Sioux Falls and earned an accounting degree. He was not a CPA.
He met my mom, Diane Kellen, in Le Mars, Iowa. They got married and had five kids — what Mom calls her "three Kings and two Queens" (Stephen, Jason — me — Stacey, Justin, and Amber).
We moved around a lot growing up and eventually settled in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Dad had kidney failure and was on dialysis.
Dad went back to school at Missouri Western State College (now Missouri Western State University). My brother Stephen and I followed him there. The three of us spent so much time helping other students in the General Use computer lab that we were always late for our own classes. Neither of us ever regretted it. Dad and I also helped set up the college's Internet service.
After that, we started a family business — CCP Online, the second Internet Service Provider in Saint Joseph.
Dad got sick and passed away in 2011. Mom passed in 2015. Stephen passed in 2021.
I renamed the family business to Spritz Communications. I manage people's computers for a low monthly cost. I love helping people. It's what Dad, Stephen, and I did together at MWSC, and it's what I still do.
Years ago, before any of this, our friend Trudi was still tracking her finances in an old MS-DOS program from the early '90s and wanted something newer. Dad — patient as always — sat down and built her a Microsoft Excel workbook. Twelve sheets, one for each month. Type a transaction into a row, pick a category, and the monthly totals would roll forward into the next month automatically. It wasn't fancy, but it worked. It solved the problem cleanly, the way Dad did most things. Trudi still uses this site today — Dad helped her first, and now I get to keep helping her.
I always wanted a way to honor him. He had a way of making complicated things simple — not by hiding the complexity, but by quietly handling it for you. When I started designing this site, I kept his Excel sheet in my head: a row for each transaction, a category dropdown, totals that just work. That's why it looks the way it looks.
Dad's Budget Tracker is, in a real sense, his project before it was mine. I'm the one who shipped the website, but the bones of it — record a transaction, categorize it, see your totals — those are his.
Why this site is free (and stays free)
Dad's Budget Tracker has no ads, no subscription tiers, no upsells, and no hidden enterprise plan. It runs on one developer's spare time and an occasional tip from people who find it useful. That's the whole business model.
This wasn't an accident. The site was built for two real people first — Trudi and me. Trudi is the same friend Dad built the Excel workbook for; she runs a working farm now and needed something simple to record her transactions for tax season. I'm a sole proprietor who keeps my own books and uses the site for my Schedule C. Both of us deserved a tool that wouldn't suddenly start charging us, plastering ads in front of our financial data, or selling our information to third parties. So none of those things happen here. Your data is yours.
If the site is useful to you and you want to help keep the lights on, there's a Buy Me a Coffee link in the footer and on the My Account page. Tips are appreciated, never expected.
About me
I'm a sole proprietor — I file my own Schedule C — and I use this site for my own books. I'm not a CPA or a tax attorney, and I'm careful never to position myself as one. What I am is a regular person who has kept his own records for years, who reads IRS publications when I have to, and who isn't afraid to use modern tools (including AI) to figure out the right answer when I'm stuck. That's the same approach I use when writing the Resources guides on this site.
My day-job background is in IT — I've spent years in break-fix repair, internet service provider work, and managed services. The technical credentials below are what they are: not finance certifications, but evidence that I take security and infrastructure seriously. The receipts you upload to this site are encrypted at rest. The PDF reports you generate are encrypted with one-time download links. Those choices come from years of taking IT security seriously, not from a checkbox someone made me tick.
About the Resources
I write the Resources articles myself, in plain language, from my own bookkeeping experience. They're not legal or tax advice, and I disclose that clearly on every page — but they're also not the bland, regurgitated-IRS-publication content you'll find on a thousand other sites. They're written for people who actually keep their own records and want a friend with a side business to tell them what to do. If that's you, start with Recordkeeping for Self-Employed People (Even If a CPA Does Your Taxes).
Contact
The best way to reach me is by email: [email protected]. If you find a bug, have a feature suggestion, or just want to say the site helped you, I'd love to hear it.
I also run spritzlive.net, my other project — a little different in flavor, but built with the same one-developer-one-domain-one-purpose ethic.
Try it out
Free forever. No ads. No subscription. Built to honor my dad.