The budget shows how much you earn, spend, and invest each month. It's built from the transactions in your cash accounts.
Open Net worth → Budget.
What goes into the budget
- Income — money coming into your accounts: salary, cashback, dividends paid into an account.
- Expenses — all your spending, by category.
- Investments — transfers from budget accounts to portfolio accounts or to a broker. These aren't expenses.
What does not go in:
- Transfers between your own accounts. The money doesn't leave your household, so it's neither income nor an expense.
- Changes in portfolio value. A paper gain isn't real money in your account.
Tabs
- Overview — the essentials for the current month.
- Analytics — where your money goes, your spending rhythm, top merchants, savings rate, category trends.
- Recurring — subscriptions, rent, salary, and other payments that repeat.
- Planner — your monthly plan for spending, income, and investments.
- Transactions — all transactions, with search, filters, and CSV export.
Budget analytics is available on the "Passive Investor" and "Active Investor" plans.
Monthly plan
- Open the "Planner" tab.
- Create a spending, income, or investment plan.
- Split the amount across categories.
To avoid starting from scratch, use "Last month's plan" or "Last month's actuals".
"Free to spend this month"
The amount you can spend until the end of the month without going over your plan. Strum also shows how much that is per day on average.
To see this amount, set a monthly spending plan. The end-of-month forecast appears once Strum has collected a few months of spending history.
Category statuses
A category's status depends on your spending pace, not just on what you've spent so far:
- On track — you're spending evenly, within the plan.
- At risk — at your current pace, you'll go over the plan.
- Over budget — you've already gone over the plan.
Recurring payments
Strum automatically finds payments that have repeated 3 or more times. New finds are marked "To review" — confirm them.
You can also add a payment manually: click "Add payment", then enter a name, frequency, and the date of the next payment.
If a subscription gets more expensive, Strum flags it.
Custom categories
If the built-in categories aren't enough, create your own. Learn more in the article "Cash accounts and transactions".