Guides
How to budget with envelopes, what your data is exposed to, and how to switch tools without losing your history.
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Envelope budgeting, applied to a real budget
How to split a monthly salary into envelopes when you have direct debits, annual bills and a bank balance that lies. A step-by-step guide, no jargon.
8 min readUpdated
Then, in order
Overspending an envelope: what to do, and what if you don’t
The three ways to cover an overspent envelope, how to choose, and the part most guides skip: what a negative balance does when the month turns.
7 min readUpdated
Annual bills: turning a yearly expense into a monthly line
Why a bill you have known about for twelve months still lands like a surprise, how to size the monthly amount, and what happens to the plan the month you skip it.
8 min readUpdated
A month ahead: paying this month with last month's income
The difference between being short and being late, what a one-month buffer is worth according to the research, and how the number is calculated.
8 min readUpdated
Your bank balance is not your budget
Why the number your bank shows is the wrong one to spend against, what the research says when you use it anyway, and how to decompose it.
7 min readUpdated
What your budgeting app sees when it connects to your bank
What a PSD2 aggregator receives, how long it keeps it, and why a transaction label reveals more than its amount. No scaremongering.
5 min readUpdated
Budgeting in euros: what actually differs
One salary a month, a third committed before you decide, and a comma where other software expects a dot: what a euro budget has to handle.
6 min readUpdated
Moving from YNAB or Actual Budget: CSV import step by step
How to bring your transaction history across, what you cannot bring, and the two traps that make imports fail — one of them specific to comma-decimal currencies.
4 min readUpdated
Why capitalism needs you to keep buying
An economy that depends on demand never stopping, the mechanisms research has actually measured — and the three habits that protect you.
13 min readUpdated
Cash calendar: your balance, day by day
What a cash calendar is, what the only controlled study says about it, which apps show a projected balance, and what Arca’s Upcoming cash shows.
7 min readUpdated
What Arca learns from your entries, and how to turn it off
How Arca suggests an envelope from your entries, what it puts at the top of your lists, and the switch that turns all of it off.
8 min readUpdated
A budgeting app without bank access: how it really works
Keeping a budget without connecting your account: entering, importing the statement, reconciling once a month. What it costs in time, and what it gives back.
6 min readUpdated
Zero-based budgeting for a household: a worked example
Give every euro a role until none is left without one: the method, a complete example on €2,100, and the traps that make it fail.
6 min readUpdated
The bill calendar: what falls due, day by day
Arca’s Calendar page: its six marks, a day’s total, the figures for the month on screen, the day panel — and why it shows no balance.
4 min readUpdated
Savings goals: tracking a project, month by month
What a savings goal measures in Arca, how the monthly amount is worked out, how it differs from an envelope target, and the reminder of last year’s large expense.
9 min readUpdated