Plan

A budget is set before the money moves. A spending tracker records where money went after the fact. The budget states an amount in advance, so spending can be read against it as over or under.

A plan is built from lines. A paycheck line says what that paycheck is expected to bring in. A spending line names a kind of spending, such as groceries or dining out, and the amount set for it. Investment and savings lines say how much goes to each account or goal. Take-home pay, the amount deposited after taxes and payroll deductions, minus everything assigned to the lines is what is left to allocate.

A household's take-home is $6,000 a month. The plan puts $600 toward investments, $300 toward savings and $4,500 across the spending lines. That is 10%, 5% and 75% of take-home, and $600 is left to allocate.

On day 15 of a 30-day month, the spending lines have $2,100 spent against them. Half the month is $2,250 of the $4,500 planned, so spending is $150 under that pace.

Take-home

$6,000

Investments

− $600

Savings

− $300

Spending

− $4,500

Left to allocate

$600

The plan is the fixed side of the comparison. With $4,500 planned for spending, $2,100 spent by the middle of the month reads as $150 under pace; without an amount set in advance, $2,100 has nothing to be measured against.

In Taiga Finance the budget is the Plan. Its sections are Income, Investments, Savings and Spending; when the plan has fixed lines, Spending splits into Fixed costs and Variable spending. A spending line claims categories, and spending in them counts against it. When the plan has a catch-all line, such as “Everything else”, it takes the spending no other line claims, apart from spending it can't route, which the rail lists as Unbudgeted.

A spending line with a planned amount shows what has been spent beside that amount, with a meter that marks how far through the month it is. The spent figure is marked once spending passes the planned amount. A spending line other than the catch-all is set to “Resets” or to “Carries over”, which carries its balance, unspent or overspent, into the next month as an available balance.

A band at the top of the Plan draws the planned amounts for Investments, Savings and Spending, or Fixed costs and Variable spending, as segments of the month's take-home; what they don't claim is the band's tail, “Left to allocate”, whose working reads take-home minus planned, and a plan with more planned than take-home reads “Over”. The rail beside the lines reads “This month”: Received against the take-home, Funded, Spent against planned spending, Over plan and Unbudgeted.