Personal finance tools are great at tracking what has already happened. But when it comes to planning what comes next, most apps stop at simple, fixed budgets. That works for steady salaries and predictable bills, but it struggles when income varies, large expenses hit at once, or you want to plan a financially intensive personal project (e.g., buying or building a house). We built something better.
Why personal cash flow planning needs an upgrade
Most budgeting features feel static. You enter fixed amounts and hope reality follows. Life rarely does. Many of our users juggle variable income, infrequent but large expenses, and multi‑account setups. They need flexible plans, not rigid envelopes.
In business finance, this problem has been solved for years with planning tools that forecast cash, model scenarios, and iterate quickly. We took the best ideas from that world and brought them to personal finance.
Instead of static numbers, you can plan with moving parts, see how decisions play out across months (short term and long term), and choose a forecasting method that fits, whether that’s a historical average, a reference to another category, or a fixed amount with a relative adjustment.
For background on structuring your data so planning works well, start with how to organize your personal finances.
What we’re launching in Walletguide
Our new planning and budgeting feature lets you build a forward‑looking view of your money, then keep it updated as real data comes in.
Model future changes such as salary adjustments, new rent, increased investing, or time off. Mix fixed, variable, and one‑off items and use different methods to set budgets and plans. Then track plan vs. actuals and adjust with one click.
Here is a short video that shows how this new feature works.
Many finance problems have been solved in the business world, but the solutions are often too complex for personal finances. With Walletguide, we bring you the same powerful tools without the complexity.
This planning feature is the next step on that path, and we’ll follow with more features like it in the future.
If you want to apply business‑style reporting alongside planning, read about creating profit & loss statements and balance sheets for your personal finances.
How it works in detail
Decide on which level to plan
To make it as easy as possible, you can decide on which level you want to plan the future. By default you can set plan values for every single category, but that can get messy if you have a lot of categories. If that is the case, you can also decide to plan one level higher and set the values on a category group level.
Set plan values for the near-term future
There are multiple ways to set the plan values for a specific month and category. You can either just double-click on a cell and just enter a fixed value directly or you can click once on a cell to open the sidebar. In the sidebar you can choose from a couple of different plan methods (Fixed, averages and references).
See the result of your plan in the planning table/grid
In the table you can then directly see the impact of your plans in form of the future plan values and the impact on the net worth. With the chart on top, you can directly see how inflows and outflows compare with each other in each month.
How this differs from the existing "Forecast" feature
Forecast was designed to look 10+ years ahead. It’s helpful for long horizons, but it’s less handy when you want to model the next 1–2 years with many moving parts. The new planner focuses on near‑ and mid‑term decisions while still supporting longer ranges. Over time, our goal is to bring both together so short‑, mid‑, and long‑term planning live in one place. For now, both features remain available.
Who this is for and what’s next
If your finances are simple, a basic budget might be enough. If your situation has more moving parts, such as multiple income sources, business ties, investing, or big life changes ahead, planning with more care can make a real difference.
We’re rolling this out now and will keep iterating. Your feedback will shape what comes next: multiple scenarios, specialized views for specific months and categories, and annual planning for longer time spans. Let us know what you think.