Designing a Spending Plan

Create a Spending Plan

Now that you have your buckets in place, you can begin to create your spending plan. Expect that your spending plan will evolve as you use it and learn about your personal spending habits. MoneyWell allows you to change your buckets and adjust your plan at any point in the future so you can think of this as a first draft.

MoneyWell uses a Spending Plan Panel to help you organize your plan. It is divided up into three major sections: "Spending Plan" (plan settings), "Monthly Cash Flow" (totals & overview), and "Spending Plan Detail" (bucket details). We'll start by focusing on the detail section so you can start putting in your planned amounts for each bucket.

1. Click Spending Plan in the upper left of the button bar: This will bring up the Spending Plan Panel
2. Review the Frequency setting for each bucket; the default value is "Monthly" so change any bucket where cash flow occurs more or less frequently
3. Fill in the Planned values for each bucket according to the frequency you've set
4. Adjust the Timing for each bucket if the income or expense occurs in either the first or second half of the month

Step 4 is all about cash flow. Look at the Monthly Cash Flow section of the panel and see your totals. The "Balance Total" is the money you have left over each month. If this is a negative number, you are planning to spend more than you earn, so you'll have to go through your plan detail and adjust the planned amounts on some of your buckets.

If you have a positive monthly cash flow, adjust the balances so each half of the month is also positive. Continue to tweak your timing for each bucket until you balance out your flow. Once you find a good balance, you may want to contact some of your vendors to get your billing dates adjusted to match your plan.

It may not be possible to balance out your month, especially if you get paid once a month or a large payment, like your mortgage, consumes a big portion of that half's income. In this case, the Allocate Income function will help you set aside money in the appropriate buckets so you don't spend it before you need it. We'll get into this deeper in another tutorial.

Once you have your first draft of your spending plan complete, save it by clicking Save Plan.