A money flow chart, drawn in full.
No other app can draw most of what follows, because no other app connects the budgeting side and the splitting side of a ledger. Every figure below is a real, tabular amount, never a coin or a symbol, and every diagram survives greyscale: colour never carries meaning on its own. What starts as six flows is, in full, the entire budgeting half the payment buys.
Split a dinner, and only your share lands in your budget.
1. Where a shared bill splits in two
A dinner paid by one person becomes two different things at once: real spending in a budget, and money owed back. The budgeting method and the group splitting method had never done this together, because they had always come from separate companies with separate databases.
The same bridge, on the bill you never call an expense.
₹42,000 of rent divides into ₹10,500 of your own housing and ₹31,500 owed back. The same shape as a dinner, on the largest bill you pay.
The same event, when somebody else paid.
Nothing left your account, ₹900 lands in your food budget as real spending, and ₹900 is what you owe Priya until you settle.
Income arrives once, and is assigned across every envelope at once.
2. One month, envelope by envelope
Income arrives unassigned, then is assigned across envelopes, each keeping its own category colour. One envelope is shown honestly overspent, because pretending an envelope is not empty when it is defeats the point of keeping one.
The same envelopes, read on the fourteenth.
A dashed line marks how far through the month you are. Anything filled past it is running ahead, which is information rather than a warning.
Income that arrives twice.
₹30,000 on the third and ₹22,000 on the nineteenth, assigned as each one arrives rather than planned as one monthly figure.
The rhythm you can still act on.
3. A week, not a month
A monthly review produces an intention for next month, which arrives too late to change this one. A weekly figure is an observation you can still act on, because the week is not over yet.
- ₹3,500 Budgeted
- ₹1,260 Thursday spend
- ₹640 Left going into Sunday
640 left going into Sunday.
A 3,500 food budget, read on Saturday night. Thursday took 1,260 of it, and 640 is left going into Sunday.
A week where almost nothing happened.
Two small things, on Wednesday and Saturday. A quiet week is drawn quiet, and nothing congratulates you for it.
One week closes, the next opens.
What is left carries into next week. Nothing is wiped because a Sunday ended, and an envelope spent out simply opens at its usual figure.
Six debts between four people become two payments.
4. Simplified, and nothing dropped
Four people owe each other six separate amounts. Simplified, the same outcome takes two payments. When someone in the group has no app installed, their share is not silently dropped, it stays as a labelled amount still owed.
Why the fewest payments.
Six payments moving ₹9,400 become two moving ₹3,900, with everyone ending exactly where they should.
When somebody has not paid.
The balance is simply there, with its working, whenever you look. No reminder, no nudge, no score, and no flag against the person.
Join now and you never pay. Everyone after you pays more.
5. Price by cohort
The launch cohort gets the app free, permanently. Every cohort after that pays a little more than the one before it. The line only rises, and it is one price for the whole app: an optional server-backed extra would be priced on its own, and only if people ask for one.
- ₹0 Cohort 1
- ₹200 Cohort 2
- ₹500 Cohort 3
- ₹1,000 Cohort 4
- ₹1,500 Cohort 5
Join now and you never pay. Everyone after you pays more.
Whatever you pay on the day you install it, you pay once, and it never rises again for you.
Why a price that rises, and not one that repeats.
One payment, flat for the whole eight year product cycle, against a line that keeps climbing for as long as you keep the app.
You join a rung, and you stay on it.
Whatever the price is on the day you install, that is your price permanently. The ladder may stop climbing, it never steps down onto somebody who already paid.
One month, and every envelope, read at a glance.
6. Where colour carries category
A month by category and a grid of every envelope are a different job from the six flows above: telling several spend categories apart at a glance. Each earns its own generated colour, one hue per category, fixed order, never hand-picked.
Rent is nearly half of everything you spent.
One month of spending, by category. Rent is nearly half of everything.
Eating out is the only envelope over budget.
Six envelopes, halfway through the month. Eating out is 1,200 over.
Is this month normal, or not.
This month set beside the three before it. Rent is the largest number and the least interesting; eating out is the only bar that moved.
A goal states the amount, the date, and whether you are ahead.
7. Goals are arithmetic, never encouragement
No streaks, no badges, no congratulation. Missing a goal produces an offer to re-plan and a new monthly figure, never an alert or a colour change. A goal can also belong to two people, both reading the same number.
Two people saving for one thing, both reading the same number.
A goal can belong to two people. Each contribution is visible, the total is one number, and both of you see it without asking each other.
₹1,100 behind. Re-plan the rest?
Miss a month and the app offers arithmetic rather than a warning: one action recalculates what is left and shows the new monthly figure.
Ahead is also just a number.
₹2,400 ahead of plan. You are told the new date it lands on if you carry on, and that is all.
Everything that repeats, before it arrives.
8. Bills, envelopes and cards
What carries forward at month end, what is set aside monthly for a bill that lands once a year, what is already committed in the next thirty days, and a credit card handled without counting anything twice.
What is left over is yours to place.
At the end of a month, an envelope can carry its balance forward, or hand it back to be assigned somewhere else. You set the rule once, per envelope.
The annual bills, stopped from ambushing you.
School fees, insurance and festivals arrive once a year for large amounts. Set the same money aside monthly and the month they land stops being a shock.
Everything that repeats, before it arrives.
Rent, the phone bill, the gym, the card payment. Set aside before anything else is planned, so it cannot be spent twice.
A card, without counting anything twice.
What you buy on the card is spending, in its categories. Paying the card off moves money between two of your accounts, and is not spending again.
Budget from what has arrived, never from what is expected.
9. Not everyone has a monthly salary
Freelancers, business owners and commission earners do not have a monthly salary. Income here is a thing that happened, on a date, for an amount, read back over a week or over a year.
Budget from what has arrived, never from what is expected.
Freelancers, business owners and anyone paid by the job do not have a monthly salary. Income here is a thing that happened, on a date, for an amount.
In and out, twelve months at a time.
A year of money in against money out. Two of these twelve months went the wrong way, and you can see which two.
A month where nothing came in.
August brought nothing. The runway shortened from 41 days to 12 and said so. Nothing turned red and nothing was assigned, because nothing arrived.
Every account, and every balance, opens up into what made it.
10. Nothing written in without you
Every account you have, in one ledger. A rule you write yourself, in your own words, filing a transaction without asking twice. A balance that opens up into exactly the expenses that produced it, adding up in front of both of you.
Bank, card, cash, wallet and investments, in one ledger.
Every account you have, with one total across all of them. Investments are tracked from your statements rather than from live market prices.
A rule you wrote, not a guess we made.
Tell it once where something belongs and it files every one after that. In your words, editable, reversible.
Every balance opens up into the expenses that made it.
A balance of 2,400 is three expenses, three shares, and an addition you can check in front of the person who owes it.
Why draw money as a flow at all.
Most budgeting apps show where money went
A flow is a different claim: it shows where money is going, and what it becomes next, in your budget, in someone else's, or still in transit as a receivable. That is only possible because Spendthrift is the one place both halves of a shared expense live. Every diagram on this page is built in the same flat, tokens-only system as the rest of the site, and every one of them is a real amount, never invented for effect.
A list is checked. A flow is understood.
The same month as a column of numbers and as a flow. Both are true. Only one of them shows you that rent is nearly half of it.
One language, here and in the app.
The chart you learn to read on this page is the chart you meet on your own money. Nothing here is an illustration of something that looks different in the app.
What we will not draw.
No celebration on hitting a goal, no streaks, no overspend rounded away, and no colour left to carry meaning on its own.