Envelopes

My grandmother kept envelopes of cash safe in her fridge. She'd divide up her cash on payday to track her budget. I do the same but with bank accounts. I know how much money I have for groceries, bills, holidays, home and car maintenance, early retirement, and day to day spending. If an account is empty I'm done spending. I also know how much savings I can spend guilt free.

Sometimes I hit a cashflow issue with a confluence of transfers falling on one day. This tool runs forward in time, so I know how much I need in my account. Building on this idea, it can chain major goals and financial events together to project exactly when I will achieve my financial goals and help me understand the impact of major financial decisions over a long horizon.

There are accounts and their opening balances. Some accounts are just spending accounts. They can be configured with inflation. There are transfers to and from the outside world and transfers between accounts.

Their are goals by age, balance or date. When a goal is reached, it triggers a change in transfers or accounts. This way you can pay off your house, then save for early retirement, then draw down your retirement funds until you are broke.

All compute is done locally in your browser. No data is transmitted to or saved on my servers. To facilitate sharing, your budget is zipped into the page URL. This URL encoding mechanism means you can share your budget link or view it on multiple systems without any data being saved anywhere you don't know.