Climb in fifteen minutes

You don't need the library to start; you need fifteen minutes and today's balances. This page is the whole system in three time-boxes: what to do today, what to practice this week, and what to add this month. Everything else in these guides is depth, not requirements.

Today: fifteen minutes

Add your accounts. Every account you actually spend from: checking, savings, cash, with their real balances as of right now. Don't reconstruct history; Climb starts from today on purpose.
Assign until zero. Everything those accounts hold shows up as available to budget. Give it to envelopes (rent, groceries, fun) until the number reads exactly zero. Zero doesn't mean spent; it means every dollar has a destination. Don't agonize over categories. The defaults are a starting point: rename them, add what your life needs, drop what it doesn't, whenever you like. And moving money later is normal, not failure.
Log your next purchase. Whatever you buy next, put it in the Logbook: payee, category, amount, ten seconds. That's the whole habit the method runs on.

That's a working budget. You're done with setup.

This week: the habit

Log close to the moment. Walking out of the store, in the car. It works with zero signal.
Check the envelope before you spend. That's the question Climb exists to answer: not "can I afford it" but "which envelope pays for it."
When an envelope runs dry, move money. From one that can spare it. This is budgeting working, not budgeting failing.
When a paycheck lands, log it as Income and assign it, same as day one. If it arrives late in the month, you can point it at next month instead. See Income, paydays, and refunds.

This month: make it run itself

Reconcile once. Compare an account against your bank, mark transactions cleared, square any difference. Two minutes per account, and every number stays trustworthy. See Reconciling.
Set up Autopilot. Record how a normal month splits, then fill each new month in one action and adjust for what makes it different. See Autopilot & Quick Budget.
When you're ready, get ahead. Your runway sets a little aside each month until a whole month is funded before it starts.

That's the whole system

Money in, every dollar assigned, spending logged, accounts reconciled, envelopes rebalanced when life happens. A few minutes a day, a few more on the 1st. The rest of these guides go deeper on each piece when you want the why; none of them are homework.