Safe to spend
Safe to spend is the amount your household can spend between now and the next pay day without touching the money set aside for bills, pending charges and a cushion. It sits on Insights, under the Ask Shayr bar. Tap it to see how Shayr worked it out.
Steps
Tap Insights. Under the Ask Shayr anything about your finances bar is the Safe to spend card. It reads, for example, Safe to spend until Oct 15, then the number, a line such as About $617 a day, a meter of the days left until pay day and How it adds up.
Tap the card. The sheet How Shayr worked this out opens. It shows the sum line by line: In checking, Pending charges, Bills due by your pay day, and the cushion.
Scroll for the bills set aside (up to 8 are listed, with a count of the rest), a Rough estimate box when Shayr is less sure, and What is counted.
Tap Done to close the sheet. On iPhone you can also drag the handle at the top down, or tap outside it. It opens at half height, and dragging the handle up makes it taller. Done stays at the bottom while the working scrolls. On iPad it is a card in the middle of the screen.
How the number is worked out
Safe to spend is the cash in your household's checking accounts, minus pending charges, minus the bills due through your next pay day, minus a cushion. The per day figure is what is left divided by the days until pay day. The parts are rounded cautiously, so they add up to the headline and the headline never overstates.
- Cash is checking style accounts from every active member of the household. Savings, money market, CDs and similar accounts are left out on purpose. Credit cards, loans and investments are not read. If savings are all you have linked, Shayr counts them and says the number is a rough estimate.
- Pending charges are the ones on those accounts that take money out. An expense you added by hand to one of those accounts is set aside for 4 days, until the bank has had time to post it, unless Shayr already has the bank's version. Entries on a Cash account are not read.
- Bills are the recurring bills Shayr is fairly sure of, due from today through your pay day. A bill that varies is set aside at the higher of its last amount and its average.
- Your pay day is the next expected paycheck that Shayr has found in your transactions: a weekly, every two weeks, twice a month or monthly deposit of at least $100 and at least 20 percent of your household's largest paycheck. The soonest one wins. If a paycheck is due today, the number runs to the one after, and rises once the money lands. If Shayr finds no pay day, it runs to the end of the month and says so.
- Budgets are not subtracted. A budget is a plan, and bills are already set aside, so subtracting both would count rent twice.
The cushion
The cushion is money you keep out of the number on purpose. It is a setting for your whole household. Everyone sees the same one, and anyone in the household can change it.
- Open How it adds up on the Safe to spend card.
- Next to the cushion line, which reads Cushion, suggested or Cushion, your choice, tap Change.
- Choose Suggested, which shows an amount such as $1,250 and the words About a week of your spending, or choose My own amount and type a whole dollar amount from $0 to $25,000. Typing in the box picks My own amount.
- Tap Save. The sheet, the Insights card and the cash flow forecast all use the new cushion.
The suggested amount is about one week of your household's normal spending: the last 90 days of spending divided by 13, rounded to the nearest $50, and never under $500 or over $5,000. With less than 60 days of history it is $500. Rent and mortgage payments count as spending here. Transfers, card payments, income and pending purchases do not.
Plans and who sees it
Safe to spend is on the free trial, Bussin and GOAT. It looks ahead up to 30 days on the trial and Bussin, and up to 90 on GOAT. Everyone in the household sees the same number. It never names or compares people.
When it says Rough estimate
The card says Rough estimate, and the sheet gives the reason, when Shayr found no pay day, has less than 60 days of transactions, found no recurring bills, has a checking account that is disconnected, or only has savings to count.
Other things the card can say
- Over by $800 means the parts add up to more than you have in checking. There is no minus sign.
- If no checking account is linked, or every checking bank is disconnected, the card says so instead of showing a number.
- If Shayr cannot refresh, it keeps the last numbers and says so in one line.