A budget combines recurring flows, existing balances and future goals, which answer different questions. This planner keeps those quantities separate and uses one monthly-cent model for its overview, tables, charts and report. Its results describe the entered assumptions; they do not establish a universal saving target or predict future income.

Recurring entries and monthly posting

Every income, expense and contribution entry retains an amount and frequency. Monthly entries use 12 periods per year, biweekly entries use 26, and annual entries use one. Each active entry is converted to its monthly equivalent, then rounded once to cents using exact decimal arithmetic. Ledger totals sum those posted entries. Switching the display period does not overwrite the original values, so a repeated switch cannot repeatedly rescale a goal contribution.

Annualized totals multiply the posted monthly result by 12. For example, 2 USD per biweekly period posts as 4.33 USD per month and 51.96 USD annualized, whereas 26 original payments total 52 USD. This small difference is disclosed rather than described as exact yearly receipts. The canonical CSV keeps the original amount, frequency and posted monthly cents alongside the report.

When entering a new amount after a period switch, check the selected period beside the controls. That edit becomes the new original entry, while unrelated categories retain their own periods and amounts. This distinction matters when combining a monthly salary, a biweekly contribution and an annual insurance bill.

Planned saving, capacity and existing cash

Remaining monthly cash equals take-home income minus Needs, Wants and planned saving. A saving plan remains visible when the result is negative: silently reducing it would hide the intended allocation and its funding gap. Saving capacity instead equals take-home income less Needs and Wants, floored at zero. The affordable portion cannot exceed that capacity, and it is apportioned between the general goal and sinking funds using the same whole-cent rules.

An existing reserve is a stock of accessible cash, not another monthly contribution. General-goal balances and fund balances are also entered separately. Moving cash between owned accounts changes its location without creating an expense; optional transfer memos are therefore excluded from financial totals. Payments to other parties still need an expense entry, and the same bill provision should not also be counted as a fund contribution.

The general goal uses only its designated contribution. Each sinking fund has its own starting balance and target, so an existing reserve is never automatically copied into every goal. Check the active source selector before editing a bucket: an inactive total or category draft is retained without being counted.

Two runway questions and their limits

With ongoing income, only Needs plus Wants above take-home income create the modeled external cash deficit. A 2,000 USD reserve and 500 USD monthly spending gap give four months of deficit runway. Without income, the same reserve is divided by all entered Needs plus Wants. At 3,500 USD monthly spending that is about 0.57 months, a different question with different assumptions.

The reserve chart shows available balances, stops at zero and assumes no future surplus additions. It does not plot additional borrowing or debt growth. A blank balance stays unknown; an entered zero is known zero; a negative balance is shown as debt. When there is no relevant withdrawal, no finite exhaustion date is calculated. Changes to income, spending, access to funds and payment timing can change the real outcome.

The displayed unemployment result includes Wants because that is the plan you entered. If you want an essentials-only unemployment scenario, capture a baseline and explicitly reduce the relevant expenses in a named version; the tool does not assume discretionary cuts on your behalf.

References, scenarios and conditional goal paths

The default 50/30/20 reference is editable and does not grade a household. The saving gap is the positive difference between the selected monthly saving reference and the entered saving plan; annualization multiplies that gap by 12 once. Applying a reference is an explicit allocation change with Undo, rather than an automatic correction after every edit.

Capture a baseline before changing the working budget, then compare named versions using monthly cash, saving and both runway concepts. Goals assume nominal dollars, zero investment return, zero inflation and no automatic safety buffer. A target month determines the needed contribution, while current or past deadlines and zero contributions remain explicit. When saving is underfunded, the planned path is conditional and the affordable path uses current capacity. Neither path guarantees future deposits.

Scenario differences compare the selected version with the captured baseline rather than silently replacing the baseline. Finite runway changes are expressed in months; unknown balances and non-finite exhaustion cases remain labeled instead of being converted into artificial numeric differences.

Reviewable actions and private working state

Save workspace writes the current plan, baseline and named versions to this device only after an explicit choice. Later edits remain unsaved until the next Save. Reset clears the working plan and an incoming financial link while retaining saved records. Delete removes only this calculator’s saved records, including older payloads. Earlier writer values are interpreted by their known schema before any separator recovery choice, and original old records are retained until explicit deletion.

Share previews a clean link by default. Including active financial values requires a choice, and including names requires another; inactive drafts, baseline and named versions are excluded. Embed always starts clean. Incoming link values remain in the address bar and reload their original state even after ordinary edits, so review the address before distributing it. Copy, CSV and Print contain the complete reconciled report and may include entered names; handle those outputs with the same care as the original budget.