Expenses & debts

Where to find it

In the app, go to My Plan → Expenses & debts and click + Add expense for each thing you spend money on or owe. Add a row for each meaningful cost — housing, groceries, insurance, a car loan, and so on.

The fields

• Name — a label, like Groceries or Car loan.
• Category — pick from Housing / Mortgage, Taxes, Health insurance, Healthcare, Groceries, Utilities, Transportation, Insurance, Discretionary, Debt, or Other. Category is used for grouping and helps the app spot loan-like lines.
• Monthly amount — how much you spend per month, in today's dollars at your plan start. Enter what it costs now; the app grows it forward with inflation automatically, so you never type future prices yourself.
• Cost over time — Rises with inflation (it starts at the plan's default inflation, and you can change the rate for this one expense) or Stays fixed (never grows).
• Starts (optional) — the first month this expense applies. Leave blank to begin at plan start.
• Ends (optional) — the last month it applies. Leave blank to run to the end of the plan.

How inflation grows your expenses

Every expense is anchored to your plan start and grown forward each year. At the plan's default of, say, 2.5%, a $600 monthly grocery bill becomes about $768 a month in ten years and roughly $983 in twenty. This is why a budget that feels comfortable today can still run tight decades later — and why the forecast has to model it.

The inflation override

Use Cost over time when one expense doesn't move with everything else:

• Healthcare often rises faster than general prices — leave it on Rises with inflation and set the rate to 5%.
• A fixed loan payment never rises at all — choose Stays fixed so the app keeps it flat instead of inflating it.

Debts and loans: set an end date

A loan is different from an ordinary expense: it stops once it's paid off. If you don't tell the app when, it will keep charging that payment for the rest of the plan — making your forecast look worse than reality.

So for any mortgage, car loan, or other debt:

1. Set Ends to the payoff month (for example, a car loan that finishes in 2031-04).
2. Set Cost over time to Stays fixed — a loan payment is a fixed dollar amount that doesn't grow.

The "loan?" nudge

When a line looks like a loan or debt (by its name or category) but has no end date, the app shows a small amber reminder:

Looks like a loan/debt — set the payoff month so it stops (and “Cost over time” to Stays fixed).

That's your cue to add the payoff month so the debt doesn't run forever. Once you set Ends, the reminder goes away.

Subscriptions have their own card

Bills that renew on a schedule — streaming, software, memberships, yearly renewals — go on the Subscriptions card right below this one, not in this list. This card notes how many subscriptions you have and their monthly total. See Subscriptions.

A quicker way: build these lines from your real spending

Typing every expense from memory is easy to get wrong. If you'd rather start from your actual bank and card activity, import your transactions and the app will show you, category by category, where this list disagrees with what you really spend (Spending tab → Compare). A category with no line here can be added with one click, and a line that already exists can be set to what you really spend with one more — each is a single ordinary edit to a single line, which you'll then see (and can change again) on this page. Nothing changes here unless you click it, and never in bulk. See Your plan vs. your real spending.

What to do next

Add your income streams and your accounts, then read the projection to see whether — and when — the money runs out.