How it works — Finance Planner

The six aspects of a plan, held at once

1. Cash flow — What a month leaves you. Income per person and the standing costs of a normal month, twelve times over. The part everything else is built on. In the planner: Income · Recurring Expenses.

2. Commitments — What is already spoken for. The trip in July, the tax bill in September, the kitchen whenever it happens — the one-offs that turn an average month into a real one. In the planner: Additional Expenses.

3. Discipline — What you meant to spend. A yardstick over all spending, one category, or one project — read per month or as one pot for the year. In the planner: Budgets.

4. Resilience — What you can absorb. The lowest point the balance reaches, against the buffer you set — and the monthly check-in that keeps the plan honest about it. In the planner: Savings.

5. Ambition — What the money is for. Goals funded out of what each month actually leaves you, after every expense is paid — not out of what you hoped it would leave. In the planner: Saving Goals.

6. The long run — What all of it becomes. Investments, pensions, what you own and what you owe, each compounding or amortising at its own rate into a net worth you can defend. In the planner: Forecast · Investments · Pensions · Assets & Debts.

All six run off one set of figures you type once

Layer one — you type it: The facts of your year. Five kinds of thing, entered once. A salary fills twelve months; a standing cost charges every month it is due; the rest is what you already know is coming. (Income, per person, Recurring costs, One-off spending, Balances and accounts, Rates, debts and horizons)

Layer two — it derives: What each month actually does. No estimates and no smoothing. Money that leaves the balance leaves it once, in the order it really moves — and the sum closes on every month row, not just over the year. (Baseline net, Monthly net, Budget consumption, Surplus after expenses, Equity after debt)

Layer three — it projects: Where all six aspects end up. Each part carries its own model rather than one blended rate: savings roll forward, goals take what is left, investments and pensions compound, debts amortise, assets hold their value. (Savings trajectory, Goal dates, Investment growth, Pension at retirement, Net worth)

One reading a month, back into layer one

A forward plan drifts from the bank within a month or two — that is not a flaw, it is what a plan is. So the stack has one input that runs backwards: what your balance actually was.

That reading sets the month’s closing balance outright. Everything in layers two and three re-derives from it, and the difference between plan and reality is kept and shown rather than quietly absorbed.

About twenty minutes to type a year in, then about a minute a month

Every part keeps its own rate; nothing is blended into one optimistic number

Every figure computed in your browser, from a plan that stays on your device

The rules the arithmetic follows

Baseline net = income + recurring outgoings. Outgoings are stored negative, so a month that nets nothing reads as nothing rather than as a subtraction you have to do yourself.

Monthly net = baseline net − one-offs − invested − paid into a pension − debt repaid. Everything that leaves the balance leaves it once, in the order money actually moves.

Spending counts when it is planned or done, and committed or likely. A skipped entry never counts, and a maybe is deliberately left out — parking a possible expense should not make the plan look worse than the plan is.

A budget is a yardstick, not a forecast input. Budgeting 15,000 for a kitchen and itemising 3,000 of it leaves the projection showing 3,000. Budgets never touch the savings projection.

Net worth = savings + investments + asset value − everything owed. Read from today’s balances, with each asset compounding at its own rate and every debt repaid at its own — never one blended rate over the lot.

A monthly cap is amount × months in view; a yearly one is pro-rated. Half a year into a yearly budget you are expected to have used about half of it. Untick months to make a budget seasonal, and the pro-rating follows the months you kept.

This is a planning tool, not financial advice

All six aspects are arithmetic on the figures you typed, not judgement. Finance Planner will tell you that August is the tightest month and that the pension pot lands short; it will not tell you what to do about either, and nothing it shows is financial advice.