envelopes

My grandmother kept envelopes in her fridge, one per spending category, cash divided between them on payday. Groceries had its own envelope, bills had theirs, and when an envelope was empty, that category was done spending for the period — not a guess, not a vibe, just what's actually left. Envelope budgeting is that idea formalised: money gets allocated into named accounts as it arrives, and each one only ever holds what it's actually meant to cover.

This tool runs that idea forward in time. Transfers move money between accounts on a schedule — the same rhythm real pay and bills follow — and two timeframes live in the same model: everyday cashflow and the long retirement horizon, because they're not actually separate problems, just some transfers firing weekly and some firing once a decade. Goals watch for a date, an age, or a balance being reached, and redirect money once they fire — that's how a real plan actually changes shape over a lifetime, modelled as data instead of hand-waved.