Avina
Safe to spend calculator
Your bank balance is not your spending limit. Rent is in there. So is the insurance that comes out on the 15th, the subscriptions you forgot about, and whatever you are putting aside for something later. Take those out and what is left is the number that actually answers "can I afford this?".
Work out your safe to spend
Safe to spend this month
$829
Rent, bills, savings and your reserve are already taken out. This is what is left.
About $28 a day for the next 30 days.
Safe to spend this month, 829 dollars.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. The maths runs in your browser and nothing is saved.
Why your balance is the wrong number
A bank balance is a fact about the past. It tells you what arrived and what has already left. It says nothing about what is on its way out, which is the only thing that matters when you are standing in a shop deciding whether to buy something.
Most of the money in a current account on any given day is already promised to somebody else. Rent has a date. The phone bill has a date. The amount you meant to save has a date too, even if it is one you set yourself. Spending it does not feel like a mistake at the time, because the balance said it was there.
Safe to spend is what is left after all of those are set aside. It is a smaller number and a more useful one.
How this calculator works
It is one subtraction, done in the order that matters:
Money you have, minus rent, minus other bills due, minus what you are setting aside, minus the cushion you want to keep.
Two rules make the answer trustworthy. It never shows a negative, and it never rounds in your favour. If the total of your commitments is larger than your balance, printing minus two hundred dollars would be technically correct and practically useless, so it holds the answer at zero and tells you the size of the shortfall instead. That is a different problem, and it deserves to be named rather than buried in a minus sign.
- What it counts
- Cash you can actually reach
- What it holds back
- Bills, savings and your cushion
- What it never does
- Show you a negative
Questions people ask
Should I include my credit card limit?
No. A credit limit is money you can borrow, not money you have. Putting it in the top line would make the answer larger and wrong. If you are carrying a card balance you plan to pay down this period, put that payment in "other bills due".
What counts as a bill?
Anything with a date and an amount that will leave your account before you are paid again. Utilities, phone, insurance, transit passes, subscriptions, a loan payment. If it is going to happen whether or not you think about it, it belongs here.
Why subtract savings? It is still my money.
It is, and that is exactly why. Money you have decided to put aside is only put aside if you stop counting it as spendable. Leaving it in the top line is how a savings plan quietly becomes a spending plan.
What if the answer is zero?
Then your commitments for this period are larger than the money you have, and the calculator will tell you by how much. That is worth knowing early. It usually means a bill needs moving, a goal needs pausing for a month, or the cushion is set higher than your situation currently allows.
Is this the same number Avina shows?
Same arithmetic, same two rules. The difference is that Avina keeps the inputs current for you: bills carry their own due dates, goals track their own contributions, and the number changes as your money does, instead of being whatever you last typed into a form.
Keep this number up to date on its own
Avina holds your bills, goals and transactions in one place and keeps the safe to spend figure current as your money changes. Start by typing things in. Connect an eligible supported bank later, or never.
Get started freeFree to start, no credit card. 7 days of Pro included, then the free plan carries on.
Built in Canada. Billed in CAD. Your bank sign-in stays with Plaid and is never entered in Avina, which can read your activity but cannot move money.