Your Safe-to-Spend is the current amount left to spend on your day-to-day transactions and it shows as a big number on your dashboard. It is the main number to monitor as you track your spending each week.
Whenever you add or confirm a day-to-day transaction that amount is included in your Safe-to-Spend. Each week your Safe-to-Spend is replenished with your Weekly Spending Limit. Since the amount of money in the Weekly Spending Limit already takes into account all you regular income and recurring expenses (and your savings goals), you can use the Safe-to-Spend balance to cover all your day-to-day spending.
This number is important to keep track of so you that you don’t accidentally overspend your money, so it is featured at the top of the dashboard with a circle graph.
What is the difference between Weekly Spending Limit and Safe-to-Spend?
You can think of the Weekly Spending Limit as how much money you are given every week to spend and the Safe-to-Spend is how much of your Weekly Spending Limit is left after the spending you have done during the week. So if you have $500 to spend each week but you have spent $200 this week so far and have $300 left, your Weekly Spending Limit is $500 but what’s currently left in your Safe-to-Spend is $300.
How is your Safe-to-Spend calculated?
The amount in your Safe-to-Spend is first set by the amount of money that was added at the beginning of the week – that is, your Weekly Spending Limit. Then the amount is adjusted by any rollover you had from the previous week. Rollover is the previous week’s ending balance – positive or negative – added into the current week’s Safe-to-Spend. Finally, any current purchases that you have made are subtracted.
Weekly Spending Limit +/- Rollover – Current Week Transactions = Safe-to-Spend
You can see the exact calculation for your current Safe-to-Spend by tapping the arrow button in the top right corner.
The resulting page will show you how your Safe-to-Spend has been calculated. Its starts with your Weekly Spending Limit and shows the rollover from the previous week which you can toggle on or off. Then it shows to the total of any transactions that have been mapped to the Safe-to-Spend this week. At the bottom of the screen you can see a list of all Safe-to-Spend transactions.
Conclusion
Your current Safe-to-Spend is one of the most important numbers to know to keep your spending in check. You use your Safe-to-Spend balance to make determinations about how much money you can spend on day-to-day transactions and still be on track with your budget. Having one number to concentrate on helps reduce the need for categorization and makes budgeting easier.