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Planning ahead, without tracking every expense

3 min read

In Moflow, planning ahead starts from two numbers, not a budget: your yearly income and your monthly burn rate. With your accounts, they give you a ticking net worth, your safety net and idle cash on Free, and projections, goals and retirement on Moflow+.

Budgeting starts from spending, with every coffee in a category. Moflow starts from what you own. It is not an accounting tool: no receipts, no merchant categories and no per-expense tracking.

One yearly income, one monthly burn, one savings rate

Yearly income is what comes in over a year. Monthly burn is what goes out in a typical month. From those two, Moflow works out your net savings, which is the year's income minus twelve months of burn, and your savings rate, which is that figure as a share of income. You set both during setup and change them in Settings whenever life changes.

A plan years out does not turn on what lunch cost on a Tuesday. It turns on how much you keep each year, and on what your accounts earn.

On Free: a ticking net worth, a safety net, idle cash

Your net worth, ticking. What you save is a key part of the rate your net worth ticks at. Add the yield or growth you set on your accounts, and Summary shows your net worth ticking at the rates you set. It is an estimate built from your own figures.

Your safety net. Switch on "Part of my safety net" for the accounts that are your cushion, or keep a share of one aside. Moflow measures what they keep aside against a level: months of your burn, or a level you set in Settings. The screen says whether the safety net covers its level or falls short of it.

Idle cash. Cash that earns nothing counts as idle cash, unless you keep it in your safety net. That includes cash sitting inside an investment account. Once the total passes a minimum, Summary shows it. What to do with it stays your call.

On Summary, idle cash shows under Needs you, beside the month waiting to be confirmed.

Projections, goals and retirement, on Moflow+

Moflow+ takes the same ledger and the same two numbers and draws where the number goes.

Projections. Moflow+ projects your wealth decades ahead. Each part of what you own grows at its own rate, what you save is added year by year, and debts are carried as owed. Three scenarios, pessimistic, neutral and optimistic, sit side by side, and two levers move the growth rate and your savings.

Projected wealth over 30 years, with goals pinned on the curve and the range from pessimistic to optimistic shaded.

Learning from your own months. As you confirm monthly snapshots, the growth your net worth actually showed is blended into the growth assumption, more so as the history lengthens, and the page says what it changed. It never rewrites your income or your burn: those stay the numbers you gave.

Adjust the scenario: a growth lever, a savings lever, and a line saying what your confirmed months changed.

Goals. On Moflow+, a goal is an amount by a date, such as a house, a car or an education, pinned on the same curve, each with an on-track read. A goal further out than the usual horizon stretches the curve toward it.

Retirement. Moflow+ shows how long the money lasts, with spending adjusted for inflation over the years it has to cover.

Retirement charts your capital year by year, with what is spent each year shown in today's money.

Trends. On Moflow+, the confirmed months are drawn as your net worth, month by month.

Projections are estimates. They show what your own figures and confirmed months imply, never what a market will do.

What it is not

Not an accounting tool, and not advice. Moflow never tells you what to buy, sell or hold. It shows what you own and your total net worth, and the decisions stay yours.

Your income and burn sit in your ledger with everything else: encrypted in transit and at rest, and used only to serve you.

Start with the two numbers

Free gives you the ledger, the ticking net worth, the safety net and idle cash. Moflow+ adds trends, goals, projections and retirement on top of the same figures. What each plan costs is on Pricing, and a sample ledger, read-only, is on the demo.