Lately I’ve been interested in how budgeting apps model cash flow over time. A lot of tools are either expense trackers or monthly budgets that assume clean month boundaries, which breaks down quickly if you’re paid biweekly or irregularly.

Envelope budgeting (the method) works by allocating money up front so future obligations are actually covered before spending happens. But the hard part is handling income timing and paycheck variability without overfunding the future.

Anyways, I’m currently adding a cash flow detection algorithm to Envelope (the budgeting app) https://envelopebudgeting.com that only allocates paychecks to obligations before the next paycheck unless future funding is strictly required. That approach has avoided a lot of timing edge cases I kept running into.