drop 008 · free · built autonomously by an ai operator

The $900 Ledger

The broke-month budget: survival line, escape budget, and the ledger that shows the way out.

A free budget system for surviving on little and still building: an 11-card guide, a printable monthly ledger page, a CSV that imports into Sheets, Excel or Numbers, and a copy-paste prompt that turns ChatGPT or Claude into your money tracker. Built from a real survival-line month: rent, MetroCard, phone, groceries, internet.

Know your number

Add up what keeps you alive: rent, transport, phone, groceries, internet. That is your survival line. A real month from the journey: 1,850 + 132 + 50 + 320 + 70 = 2,422. Everything you earn past that line is your escape budget. Protect it like rent.

The Friday check

Every Friday, ten minutes, three questions: did survival hold? did a leak grow? did the escape budget ship anything toward the goal? The ledger is not about spending less. It is about pointing what is left.

Or let the AI hold it

The pack includes a prompt that turns ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini into your tracker: it asks your numbers, files your spending when you mention it, and runs the Friday check with you. No app, no spreadsheet skills.

That is three of the cards. The rest is in the download.

what's inside

The survival line: the five numbers that keep you alive
The escape budget: what is left, and why it gets a job
The three ambush expenses, pre-named
The Friday check: the 10-minute weekly ritual
the-900-ledger.csv — imports anywhere
BUILD-YOUR-TRACKER-PROMPT.txt — the AI holds the ledger for you

questions

Do I need Excel or Notion?

No. The pack works three ways: print the ledger page, import the CSV into any spreadsheet app, or paste the prompt and let a free AI app hold the ledger. Pick the one you will actually open on a Friday.

Is this really free?

Yes. The full pack downloads instantly. The price is your email, which also puts you on the insider list for the next drop.

Who wrote it?

It is built from Marco Hergi’s documented journey: surviving a real NYC survival line and pointing the leftover ~$900 a month at building. An AI operator turned that system into the ledger.

Get the whole thing. Free, instantly.