
Managing a Spending Plan
MoneyWell automatically creates a spending plan so all you have to do is customize it. The goal is to make sure you plan to allocate your income so you have enough money in each bucket to live comfortably without going into debt. Set your planned amounts as a monthly average or set different amounts for specific months throughout the year.
To manage your spending plan:
- Click Spending Plan in the button bar
- In the upper left, you can highlight and change your spending plan name
- If you have current transactions, you can use those to help you design your plan: Choose one of the history calculation methods that fits your existing data best.
- In the spending plan detail list, change the Frequency for each bucket to match your Planned amount (e.g., if you're paid twice a month, you would set your "Salary" frequency to "Semi-monthly")
- Type a Planned amount for each bucket (press the Enter key to go to the next bucket)
- After all your amounts are entered, you can change the money flow Timing for each bucket: You may pay certain bills in the "First Half" or "Second Half" of the month or these expenses may occur "All Month"
- Optionally, if you have an expense that only occurs a few months out of the year, you can select a bucket and then change the individual monthly amounts at the bottom (the Planned amount will show an average for the year but MoneyWell will fill the buckets according to the amounts in each month)
You can watch your cash flow change as you make adjustments to your planned amounts and timing of payments. If you're always running short on cash in the first half of the month, you can balance your flow better and then contact your payees to see if they will switch the timing of your bills or payments.
If your Historic amounts are a good start for your spending plan, you can click the Reset All Totals Using History button to quickly set all your planned amounts. You can also use individual historic amounts by clicking the triangle to the right of the historic value in a bucket line.