Just realized my $4 notebook beat the $60 budgeting app I paid for

I spent about 8 months using a budgeting app that cost me $60 a year, and last October I sat down and tried doing the same thing with a cheap spiral notebook and a pen. The app was fine, but I kept letting auto categories slide and never really looked at the numbers. With the notebook I write down every dollar by hand, and somehow seeing it in my own sloppy handwriting makes me stop and think before I buy stuff. In the first month on paper I cut my eating out from around $310 to $140, mostly just because I hated writing those numbers down again. The app gave me pretty charts, but the notebook gave me a reason to care. I'm not saying apps are bad for everyone, your mileage may vary, but for me the slow paper version won. Anyone else ditch the app and go back to pen and paper, or am I just old school?