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How to Use Daily Budgets

Learn how to manage short-term spending with daily budget limits. Perfect for trips, spending challenges, or any time you need tight control over your daily expenses.

Reading time: 5 minutes

What is a Daily Budget?

A Daily Budget takes a total amount of money and divides it equally across your chosen dates, giving you a daily spending limit. Unlike monthly budgets that track regular income and expenses, daily budgets help you manage a fixed amount over a short period with day-by-day control.

Why Use a Daily Budget?

See your daily allowance – Know exactly how much you can spend each day
Stay in control – Prevent overspending
Adjust easily – Update spending for any day and see instant recalculations
Plan ahead – Set aside more money for expensive days
Track your progress – Monitor your spending day-by-day

Perfect For:

Travel & Trips

Weekend getaways, vacations, business trips, holidays, road trips

Spending Challenges

Frugal living, saving challenges, debt paydown

Managing Money Day-to-Day

Weekly allowances, pocket money, student budgets, payday-to-payday planning

How to Set Up Your Daily Budget

Follow these steps to create your daily budget and start tracking your spending day by day.

Step 1 Open Daily Budget & Get Started

Navigate to Daily Budget via the menu. Enter a descriptive name for your budget and add optional descriptive text.

Examples:

"Spain Travel - August 2026" – Include location and timeframe for travel budgets
"Monthly Allowance - March" – Straightforward identification for the allowance period

Step 2 Define Your Budget Period

Choose your Start Date and Finish Date to set the budget duration.

Step 3 Initial Amount & Currency Configuration

Enter the total amount of money you have for the entire budget period. This Initial Amount represents fixed funds to be distributed equally across all days.

Pick your currency symbol (£, $, €, ¥, etc.) and how many decimal places to show. Most currencies utilize 2 decimal places (e.g. £500.00), while others employ 0 (e.g. ¥50000). Select the currency denomination aligned with your destination.

Step 4 Calculate Your Daily Budget

Click the Calculate button to create your daily budget breakdown. The app will:

Split your money evenly across all your days
Show the starting balance for each day
Display your daily spending limit for each day
Calculate running totals throughout your budget period

Automatic Breakdown: The app creates a detailed day-by-day view showing exactly how much you can spend each day while staying within your total budget. Each day starts with a balance and ends with your spending recorded.

Step 5 Track & Adjust Your Daily Spending

As you progress through your budget period, you can update your actual spending for each day. The daily budget table has two editable columns:

Edit Balance

Change the starting balance for any day. This is useful if:

You started with a different amount than planned
You received extra money mid-trip
You need to correct an earlier balance

Effect: The app recalculates the previous day's spend and adjusts all remaining days accordingly.

Edit Spend

Update the actual amount you spent on any day. Use this to:

Record your real spending at the end of each day
Plan higher spending for specific days (meals out, activities)
Adjust when you spend less than your daily allowance

Effect: The app recalculates all future balances and redistributes the remaining budget across the rest of your days.

Lock Feature

Each day has a Lock checkbox. When you lock a day:

The row can't be edited – Balance and spend are fixed
Calculations stop there – If you're recalculating from earlier days, the app stops at the locked row
Great for confirmed days – Lock days you've already spent to prevent accidental changes

Tip: As each day passes, lock it to keep your budget accurate and prevent changes to past spending.