Getting started

Guide on how to plan and save the budget with Budget Vision

Start with regular monthly income & expenses (salary 🤑, rent 🏠, credits 🏦, bills 🧾, etc.)

In this guide:

What is a Budget Vision?

A calendar you've always had in your head. The personal budgeting app, aimed to help you find answers:

  • 💰 how much am I going to have next Monday?
  • 🌍 I have X bucks, Y euros, Z Thai bath, and a bit of coins, how much is it in total??
  • 🤔 when is it a good time to buy <tickets/gadget/etc>? Can I do it now or better wait for a week?

⏳and more.

💡

Unlike expense tracking apps, this one is aimed mostly at future, giving you an option to juggle your planned expenses to find the best time to use your money.

How to get started

TL;DR:

  1. Update the balance (use the Right-click -> "Create correction" button on any day)
  2. Add regular transactions (salary, rent, bills, groceries, etc.)
  3. Add future one-time transactions (vacation, doctor, etc.)
  4. Log your past transactions

Check in and repeat in a week (or bi-weekly, or monthly, whatever you want)

Log in and set accounts

Adjust currencies, add more accounts for savings or other if needed.

Set actual balance for all accounts

Start here, set actual balance for all accounts, so you can see how much you can spend. You'll be prompted to update the balance on login, and you can do it manually as well.

Add transactions

Add transaction

Go for regular expenses and incomes first, like payroll, rent, bills, groceries, etc. Add them as recurring transactions, so you don't have to add them every time.

Use Telegram Bot for easy AI-powered transactions

Go to Settings -> Telegram Bot (opens in a new tab), set it up, and just write the transaction in Telegram.

Examples:

  • "100$ bill last Thu"
  • "80 groceries" (will be recorded as 80 eur (if default account is in EUR) today)
  • "5+2 coffee yesterday" (will be recorded as 7 eur for coffee yesterday)

Plan ahead

Add any known future transactions, maybe you know you need to pay for something in a few months, or you want to save for something, or any one-time expenses, like vacation, doctor, etc.

Add them as future transactions, so you can see how much you can spend now.

Step by step guide

TL;DR: Start from generic things, smoothly moving to more specific ones:

Setup

  • Start with regular monthly income & expenses (salary 🤑, rent 🏠, credits 🏦, bills 🧾, etc.)

    Start with regular monthly income & expenses (salary 🤑, rent 🏠, credits 🏦, bills 🧾, etc.)

  • Now, (bi-)weekly (groceries 🛒, weekend shopping 🛍️ , etc.)

    Now, (bi-)weekly (groceries 🛒, weekend shopping 🛍️ , etc.)

  • Finally, some generic & random things you don't remember but know exist. 🍷 (+ you can add rough estimates for subscriptions, gym, parties, birthdays, ATM, etc.)

    Now your initial monthly dashboard may look like this. Feel free to move things around to make it yours

    Now your initial monthly dashboard may look like this. Feel free to move things around to make it yours

Actual planning

Example 1 (easy)

As you can notice, each day with any transaction now shows your balance for that day. This is the key feature of the Money Calendar.

This allows you to spot breaking moments until they actually happen. Let's take a look:

Here we can see that after the rent payment, I’ll have $200 - it's less than 10% of my monthly income, and there is a risky period until my next salary.

Ok, this is quite an easy one, right? Lets move on:

Example 2 (still easy)

Time to plan for the future - how much can I save each month? Let's take a look:

I want to save 10% from the salary - 300$/m. How can I set this up?

I want to save 10% from the salary - 300$/m. How can I set this up?

As we see here - there are two things I can do:

  • Save $300 from salary on 19th
  • Save $150 both on 4th and 19th.

But are those options equal? Of course, not - if I save twice a month: on 4th and 19th - something interesting is going to happen:

I’ll have 50$ for the next 3-4 days.

I’ll have 50$ for the next 3-4 days.

Murphy's First Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

So I’ll pick the other option: save 300$ on the 19th.

Example 3 (plan things)

200$ is lowest until 19th, and 950$ - until 3rd.

200$ is lowest until 19th, and 950$ - until 3rd.

So when a friend calls me and offers to go out on Friday, the 12th - I can assume that it would fit my budget much better next Friday - the 19th.

Also, I see that I can actually go with him and estimate my budget for this, so I don't have to borrow money. Nice.

Example 4 (overspending)

Ok, I’ll go to the bar on the 12th.

Oh, God, I totally forgot about that yearly subscription to my Apple account. 🤦‍♂️

Ok, it's still possible to go out with the friend next week. Glad that I can see this beforehand.

Ok, it's still possible to go out with the friend next week. Glad that I can see this beforehand.

How to follow the budget with corrections

Each time you login, you'll be prompted to update the balance for today. You can also do it manually anyyime.

The more often you update the balance, the more accurately you'll be able to see coming shortcomings in your budget (hopefully none).

💡

After the balance is set, new transactions added before the correction will update the correction amount automatically.

Frequent questions

Contact

If you have other questions, please write me an email.

What is Budget Vision?1. Initial Setup and Overview