Understanding Your Spend Amount

When you finish onboarding, the first thing you might notice is the giant number sitting at the top of your screen labelled “Spend”

This is the amount you have left after subtracting your budget from your balance. The equation used to calculate it looks something like this:

Balance - Currently Budgeted = Spend Amount

In other words, your Spend Amount is what you can spend confidently, knowing that there is enough set aside to cover your expenses, goals, and funds when they come due!

How to make your Spend Amount as accurate as possible

1. Create stashes for every item in your budget you can think of. The more expenses, goals, and funds you can account for, the more accurate your Spend Amount will be!

2. Fund your stashes to set aside money from every paycheck - before you can even miss it.

3. Cover New Transactions in your Activity section as they appear, using your funded stashes. (Otherwise, they will pull from your Spend Amount!)

4. Schedule Transfers to set aside personal money for you and your partner too - if that’s how you like to budget.

If you’re doing all this correctly - and keeping your spending within budget - then your Spend Amount should always be positive.

Troubleshooting a negative Spend Amount

So what if it isn’t? Unfortunately that might mean you’re over budget - or you’re trying to spend more money than you actually have. 

If you suspect you might be out of budget, here are a few things to check:

1. Are your stashes overfunded? If they are then congratulations! Move that money to your Spend Amount and enjoy the extra cash. It’s like finding change in your couch cushions.

2. Are there uncovered transactions in your Activity section? - If you stash your money away for an expense and never actually spend it, then it’s like you’re paying twice. Be sure to swipe and cover any new transactions you’ve budgeted for.

3. Are you budgeting more than your income? - Tap the three dots under your Budget tab, and select “Funding Schedules”. Select one, scroll down to Scheduled Transfers, and look for the total amount you have set to transfer. Make sure that this number (combined with those on all of your funding schedules) isn’t more than what you bring in on pay day.

If you’ve done all this and found that you truly are over budget, don’t sweat it! It happens to the best of us. Here’s some options for squaring things up:

1. Deposit more money: While it’s not great to make this a habit, the easiest way to square things up is to simply deposit more money from another bank account, such as your savings. You will need to do this by visiting your institution’s website. Unfortunately, Halfsies is just a helpful overlay and does not actually affect your bank balance.

2. Prioritize your stashes: If depositing more money isn’t an option then you might need to take a hard look at your budget -  figure out what stashes need funding the most - and what you can cut back on. Are there subscriptions you can cancel? Holidays you can scale down? Funds you can hold off on funding?

Cancel scheduled transfers: If you’ve cut all you can from your budget and you’re still not square, then you can also try skipping funding your personal accounts. You can do this by visiting “Funding Schedules” again underneath the three dots on your Budget tab. Select a schedule and scroll down to Scheduled Transfers. Find the transfers set to deposit into your personal accounts, and swipe right to cancel them.