The Spending tab at a glance

What the Spending tab is for

The Spending tab is where your plan meets your real spending, one month at a time. It answers two questions: "What does my plan expect this month?" and "What did I actually spend?" — and, when you want it, the difference between the two.

It is deliberately kept separate from your retirement forecast. Nothing you do here changes your projection. The forecast always runs on the expense lines in My Plan; this tab only shows, compares, and records. (When you're ready, you can bring your real spending into the plan one category at a time — see Your plan vs. your real spending.)

Plan, Actual, or Compare — the switch at the top

The What to show switch above the Spending panels picks the view:

• Plan — your plan for the month, by category, with nothing from your statements. This is where you read or override a month's budget.
• Actual — only what your statements and manual entries show: what you spent, your transactions, what still needs a category, and your spending over time. No plan figures appear anywhere in this view.
• Compare — both, side by side, with the difference per category.

The switch is remembered on this device. Before you've imported anything it starts on Plan; once you have transactions it starts on Compare.

Plan figures are always shown in blue with a Plan badge, and actual figures in teal with an Actual badge, so a dollar amount is never ambiguous about where it came from.

Your budget for a month is the plan figure — unless you override it

You don't have to set a budget. Each category's budget for a month is its plan figure: the expense lines in My Plan that belong to that category and are active in that month. Groceries planned at $800/mo in My Plan means a Groceries budget of $800 in every month, automatically — and if you change the plan line, every month's budget follows.

A line belongs to a category when it was added from that category, when it has the same forecast category (Housing, Groceries, Utilities…), or when it's simply named the same as the category. Several lines in one category add up. A category with no matching line shows no plan line and a budget of $0.

Your plan may have expense lines this table can't place — a line whose category and name match no spending category. The tab says so under the table. They still count in your forecast; give a spending category the same name as the line to see it here.

Overriding a month

Sometimes one month is different — December for the holidays, a month with a large annual premium. In the Plan view (or under Budget by category in Compare), type a different amount into the category's cell. That stores an override for that month only, marked with an amber Override badge; the plan figure isn't touched, and neither is your forecast.

• Entering 0 is a real override: "nothing in this category this month."
• Use plan figure (under the cell) removes the override, and the plan figure comes back.
• Signed in, overrides are per month, and Copy this month's overrides to another month… clones them without retyping. If the destination already has overrides you'll be asked before anything is overwritten. In the offline version an override applies to every month.

Reading Compare: Plan, Actual, Difference

For the month you're viewing, the Compare table shows three numbers per category:

• Plan — the month's budget for the category (the plan figure, or your override, which carries the Override badge).
• Actual — what you actually spent, from your transactions.
• Difference — actual minus plan. A + figure in amber means you spent more than the plan; a − figure in green means you spent less. A Total row sums all three.

Above the table, four tiles total it up: Plan, Actual, the overall Difference (over or under plan), and Income − spend — your surplus or shortfall for the month. For what these figures mean and how to read them, see Understanding your numbers.

The Actual view keeps just the spending side: what you spent, your transaction count, how many still need a category, and a table of Spent and each category's Share of the month.

One month for the whole app

The Month picker at the top right chooses the month you're looking at — and it's the same month the Forecast tab's slider and month detail use, so "September 2026" means the same thing everywhere. Because of that, the tab never jumps the month on its own. If the month you're viewing has no transactions but another month does, you'll see a line — No transactions in September 2026. Latest month with data: August 2026 — with a Show it button that moves to that month when you choose to.

Click a category to see its transactions — and its history

Any category name in the table is a link. Click it and you get two things.

A chart of that category over time, with a Monthly / Yearly switch. Under it, the trend in plain words: what you spend per period on average, and whether it's rising, falling, or holding steady — measured by comparing the recent half of your history against the earlier half. Drift under 10% is called steady, because household spending is noisy, and with fewer than four periods of data the app won't call a trend at all. If one period is more than double the average, it's flagged, since a single spike (a new roof, an annual premium) distorts every average around it.

This is the view that answers "is this creeping up on me?" — a question no single month's comparison can. Electricity at $151 this month means little; electricity averaging $118 two years ago and $151 now means something.

The transactions themselves, either for the month you clicked from or across all time — use the This month / All time switch at the top. You can re-file any transaction into a different category on the spot, handy for fixing a stray charge that landed in the wrong place. There's also an Uncategorized row for spending that hasn't been filed yet.

Where actual spending comes from

Actual figures come from transactions — either typed in by hand (Record a payment I already made, filed against the month you're viewing) or imported from your bank. That form also records a refund, which reduces what its category cost you instead of counting as income; a category whose refunds outweighed its charges shows a green credit like +$250 rather than a spend. See Refunds and credits. Importing and tracking transactions requires an account (it saves your data securely to the cloud) and is a premium feature. To get started, see Importing transactions.

New here? The glossary defines terms like plan, actual, override, and difference.

This is an educational tool to help you see your money clearly — not financial or tax advice.