Budget

Your budget is what Safe to spend is built on. Set one overall limit, fine-tune it per category if you like, and Arca keeps track of your pace through the month.

You find it under Plan → Budget. The switch under the heading moves between Budget, Debts and Goals.

Your overall budget

The overall budget is the most you want to spend in a period.

• Choose Monthly or Weekly. A monthly budget follows your financial month (usually payday to payday); a weekly one resets every Monday.
• Edit budget changes the amount; Delete budget removes it (and the category budgets with it).

Tip

You don’t need an overall budget. Without one, your category budgets together are the limit.

Category budgets

Choose Add a category budget to give a category its own limit, one at a time. At the top you see how much is Allocated to categories, what’s Free (not in a category) and the Bills to come.

• Each category shows what it has spent this period and a mark for where an even pace would be today.
• Tap a category for where the money went, its pace and the last months. The pencil edits its budget.
• If your category budgets add up to more than the overall budget, Arca says so and offers to raise the overall budget.
• Spending in categories without their own budget is listed below, and comes out of the free money.

Pace

Arca compares what you’ve spent with an even pace through the period:

• On pace: you’re fine.
• Spending fast: you’re ahead of where you’d expect to be by now.
• Over budget: the limit is reached.

You also see how much you’re under or over an even pace, and what’s safe to spend per day.

Move budget in one tap

When a category runs hot, a Suggestion card offers to move budget from a category with room to spare, for example “Move €40 from Clothing”. Your overall budget stays the same. Not now dismisses it.

This month’s bills

The bills section lists this budget month’s bills: paid ones above the Today line, the ones still to come below it. A bill is ticked off by itself when it’s paid, or you tick it off yourself. Whether bills also count against your category budgets is up to you: see Budget & bills.

Look back

Use the arrows next to the dates to see how an earlier budget month ended: what you spent, which categories went over, and which bills were paid.

Your strategy: needs, wants and savings

The Budget strategy splits your income into three parts:

• Needs: things you can’t skip, like rent, groceries and insurance.
• Wants: everything that’s nice but optional.
• Savings: what you put aside.

Common splits are 50 / 30 / 20, 60 / 20 / 20 and 70 / 20 / 10, or set your own (the three must add up to 100%). Choose Adjust to change it. Arca turns the split into an advised monthly budget, and shows each part’s target (striped) next to what you actually spent or saved.

Which part a category belongs to is its budget type, set per category in Categories and groups.