Help & Guide
Everything BFOD.us can do, in plain language — adding bills and income, budgeting each paycheck, paying off debt faster, setting savings and giving goals, reminders, installing the app, and account & billing. Every answer is grounded in exactly how the app behaves.
It's a welcome checklist that walks you through setup: two required steps — add your first income and your first bill — plus optional ones (plan a debt payoff, set a savings goal, set a giving goal, view your charts).
It won't dismiss until you finish at least one step, so a brand-new account always has some data before you dive in. Once closed, you can reopen it any time from Settings → Getting started.
You can bulk-import. Use “Prefer a spreadsheet?” in the checklist (or More → Import). Download the Excel template, fill in your bills, income, and debts, then upload it — nothing imports until every field is valid, and you get a preview before it commits.
Import always adds new entries; it never matches or merges with what you already have, so don't re-upload the same file or you'll get duplicates.
Add one income and one bill, then open your dashboard. The month view shows your paychecks and the bills each one covers; the cards up top (“north-stars”) roll your debt, savings, and giving into single dates you can watch improve.
Tap “+” (Add) or the “+” on any calendar day. Give it a name, an amount, a category, and when it's due, then set how often it repeats.
Frequencies are Every month, Twice a month, Every 2 weeks, Every week, Specific months (with one-tap Quarterly / Twice-a-year / Yearly presets), and One-off (just once). Anything but One-off repeats going forward. Categories are Utilities, Loans, Credit, Subscriptions, Saving, Giving, and Other.
Standing settings carry forward until you change them: “Automatic” pays itself, and “Unscheduled” hasn't been arranged yet. Tap the info circle next to the Status box to see a plain-English note for each one.
Single-month settings apply only to the month you're viewing: “Scheduled” (queued this month — next month starts fresh), “Posted” (paid/cleared; income shows this as “Received”), and “Not due this month” (skip just this once).
Set that month's status to “Not due this month.” The bill stays on the list — shown struck-through — but drops out of what you owe and out of your “left to spend,” and it's back to normal automatically next month.
To stop a bill for longer, retire it (“It's no longer needed” on the trash menu or the Recurring page): it stops appearing going forward while your past months stay put. Changed your mind? Bring it back anytime with “Resume” in the Recurring page's Retired section.
A normal edit — amount, name, category, or a standing status — applies from the month you're viewing forward; earlier months keep their history. There's no “which months?” prompt anymore; changes simply travel forward.
Two things behave differently: changing the frequency/schedule rewrites the whole series, and marking a bill Posted or Scheduled affects only that one month (those are single-month events, not standing settings).
It marks that month's copy as Posted — settled for that month only — so it drops out of what you owe but stays visible in a “posted” group. It never carries onto future months; next month reopens normally.
If you mark next month's bill paid early, the app asks to confirm and then moves that payment into the current month (shown as “carried over”).
Marking a bill Posted is how you tell BFOD that the money actually left your account, and it's the single most important habit in the app — almost everything that tracks your progress is built on it. Marking it Posted is what clears the bill from what you owe and your “left to spend,” draws a linked debt's balance down (moving your debt-free date), ticks up your savings, giving, and emergency-fund goals, counts toward your streaks and trophies, and records the month accurately for Insights.
So the moment a bill clears the bank, mark it Posted. A bill that really cleared but is still sitting as Scheduled or Unscheduled is invisible to all of that: your balances don't move, your goals don't fill, and your streak breaks — even though the money is already gone. If anything ever looks “stuck,” the usual cause is a cleared bill that was never marked Posted.
Autopay shortcut: if a bill truly pays itself every month, set its status to Automatic once. BFOD then counts it as paid for your debt, savings, and giving balances automatically, with no monthly tapping. The one exception is the “clean month” streaks and trophies — those count only bills you've actually marked Posted — so if you're chasing those badges, give your autopay bills a quick tap to Posted when they clear too.
Open the bill and tap the trash can, or tap the item on the Recurring page. Instead of jargon you pick why you're removing it:
“It's no longer needed” stops it going forward but keeps everything you've already tracked. “It was a mistake” removes it completely — this month and all future months. A one-time entry just removes with a single confirm.
No. It removes the bill from the current month and all future months and deletes the rule so it can't recur — but any month that has already closed keeps its record.
Nothing in the app can change a closed past month, so genuine history is always safe either way.
Once a month ends it's frozen as a permanent, read-only snapshot, so nothing can rewrite what already happened. Edits and removals only ever affect the current and future months.
That's also why a change “travels forward” from the point you make it rather than reaching back into history.
That banner appears whenever you've stepped off the current month, so you always know the calendar, sliders, and any edits below it belong to the month you're browsing — not today. Tap “This month” to jump straight back.
On a future month, anything you change — a bill, a status, the Monthly Flex slider — applies to that month only. On a past month it's simply a heads-up that you're looking at closed, read-only history.
It lists every recurring bill and income rule in one place (More → Recurring) so you can manage a whole series at once — edit it, or remove it (no longer needed vs. a mistake).
Series you've ended move to a “Retired” section, kept for history — and you can “Resume” any of them to start it up again. To skip a single month instead, use “Not due this month” in that month.
Open the entry form (e.g. the “+” on a calendar day) and flip the Bill / Income switch at the top to Income. That switch only shows for new entries — you can't change an entry's type after saving.
Set the amount and a schedule. For a paycheck, pick how often it arrives and its first date. Enter your net (take-home) pay, not gross — see the next question.
Enter your net (take-home) pay — the amount that actually lands in your account after taxes, insurance, retirement, and other deductions.
Every “Left to spend” number is your income minus bills, savings, and giving, so it only works if the income is money you can really spend. Using gross pay would overstate every paycheck and make each pay period look like it has more room than it does.
For every-two-weeks pay, choose “Every 2 weeks” and set your “Most Recent Payday” — it then repeats every 14 days (26 checks a year), so some months automatically show two, occasionally three, paydays.
For fixed dates like the 1st and 15th, choose “Twice a month.” Weekly works the same way from your most recent payday.
Enter your typical/planned amount. When the amount changes for good, edit it and the app applies the new amount from that date forward without rewriting past months.
For a single unusual check, edit just that one occurrence.
It's the stretch of days one paycheck covers — from a payday until the day before your next payday (the last one runs to month-end). The app builds these automatically from your income, one per payday.
Bills are grouped under the paycheck that covers their day, so you can see what each check has to pay for.
It's what's left of that paycheck after its bills and its share of your savings and giving goals — income minus bills minus savings minus giving. Money earmarked for goals is deliberately not counted as spendable, which is why a check can show less free cash than “income minus bills.”
If a paycheck can't cover its own bills, the app first tries to fund the gap from earlier paychecks this month (see “Use from Reserve”). Only when there's no earlier money left does it show a real, red “Short” — the Monthly Flex slider is the intended way to free some goal money up when that happens.
Bills don't fall evenly across your paychecks — one check might be light while another gets buried under big bills (insurance, a quarterly payment). So the app levels the month for you: an earlier flush paycheck's surplus is held back to cover a later tight one, exactly the way the money really flows through your month.
It's one shared reserve. The first flush paycheck to stock it reads “Hold in Reserve”; a later flush paycheck that tops up a reserve already holding money reads “Add to Reserve.” Either way it's the part of that check's surplus set aside for later bills, so you know not to spend it. On a tight paycheck you'll see a calm blue “Use from Reserve” instead of a scary “Short.” It only turns red “Short” when even your earlier paychecks can't cover it — that's a genuine gap for the month.
This is automatic and only rearranges the timing within the month — it never changes your bills, your totals, or how much extra the Monthly Flex slider puts toward debt.
Dragging a bill to another day (or using “Assign to income period” in the editor) sets which paycheck funds it — it does not reschedule the bill. The due date stays exactly where it was.
It only affects the month you're in; other months are untouched. Drop it back inside its original pay period to clear the override. (Drag is desktop-only; on phones a day's bills collapse behind a “X bills due” line.)
That's your everyday-spending budget marker — the reserve line. It marks how much of this month's leftover you're keeping to spend. Drag the handle up to that line to fund your savings, giving and debt from the surplus above it.
Drag the handle PAST the marker (to the left) and you dip into your spending budget on purpose — that extra pours straight onto your focus debt as an all-out attack. So the marker is the boundary between “fund goals from surplus” and “spend less this month to kill debt faster.”
It's one slider that splits this month's leftover money — the cash left after your bills are covered — into two jobs: money you keep to Spend now, and money you use to Get ahead (savings, giving, and paying extra on debt). Drag it to choose how much goes to each.
The whole bar is exactly your leftover, so the two sides always add up to what you really have. You can't plan to spend more than came in.
Each color is a place your money goes this month: amber is your Spending, blue is extra toward Debt, rose is Giving, and green is Savings. The key under the bar shows the dollars for each, and they change as you drag. Thin notches sit between the colors so you can tell where one ends and the next begins.
Your savings and giving amounts come straight from the goals you set in the Savings and Giving studios — the slider only turns them up or down for this one month, it doesn't invent them.
Your Spending grows, and the app takes that money back from the other three in a set order, so your savings is protected the longest: first it eases the extra on Debt — pulling every debt down toward its minimum payment — then it eases Giving, and Savings is the very last thing to shrink.
Slide all the way and every debt sits at its minimum (the least your lender requires), freeing the most cash for a tight month. Slide the other way, toward Get ahead, and it refills in reverse — savings and giving first, then the rest piles onto the debt you're focused on, above its minimum.
Leftover = your income for the month minus the bills you have to pay (rent, utilities, subscriptions, and the minimum payments on loans and credit cards). Those minimums are locked; the slider only divides what's left after them.
Because the bar is that leftover, Spending plus Get-ahead can never add up to more than you earned. If your bills are bigger than your income, there's nothing to split — the app says so plainly instead of showing a made-up number.
The extra is added right onto one debt's payment for the month — the one your payoff strategy attacks first (highest interest under Avalanche, or smallest balance under Snowball; set it in Debt Studio). Every other debt sits at its minimum, so every spare dollar is concentrated on that one — that's exactly how avalanche and snowball work. So a $150 card minimum simply shows as $650 on the calendar when there's $500 piled on it. If that would more than clear the debt, the rest rolls to the next one.
That bigger payment sends more money to the balance, so it draws down faster and pulls your debt-free date closer.
As low as the minimum you set for that debt in Debt Studio, and as high as its balance can take. The minimum is the floor; the slider moves the actual payment anywhere between it and an all-out attack. Slide fully toward Spending and the line drops to its minimum; slide toward Get ahead and it climbs well above your usual payment.
Example: a credit card with a $150 minimum that you normally pay $300 on will show $150 at the minimum end and rise past $300 at the attack end — the slider governs everything in between. That's why it matters to enter your true minimum in Debt Studio: the money above it is what the slider puts to work.
No. It's a one-month bump only; your recurring minimum is untouched, and next month starts fresh from wherever you leave the slider. It never raises a future payment, and it's fully reversible.
Because it's the real amount for the month, marking it paid draws the balance down by the larger number — that's what buys the earlier payoff date.
No — everything here is “payment-fixed.” Easing a savings or giving amount just pushes that goal's finish date a little later; easing the debt extra simply skips this month's speed-up. Nothing ever balloons a future payment.
Yes. When you let go of the handle, each “Free” amount on your paydays updates to match — turn money toward Spending and Free goes up; turn it toward Get ahead and Free goes down. The total of all your “Free” lines equals the Spending number on the slider.
It only touches the month you're looking at; every other month stays exactly as it was. The slider's own numbers preview while you drag, and the calendar catches up the moment you release.
No — a brand-new month sets itself. The first time you open a month, once your income and bills have loaded, it starts by putting your leftover to work for you. If you'd rather keep more to spend, drag toward Spending and it sticks — it won't reset the next time you open that month.
Each month is separate, so a spendy month never bleeds into the next.
It's the green tag on the slider and the “Make this a monthly habit” panel on your dashboard's Debt card. It's the payoff you'd buy by sending this month's extra to debt every month from here on — a sustained habit, not a one-time payment. It updates live as you drag.
Your dashboard card leads with that “keep this up” date, and draws your minimum-payments floor beneath it as the dashed line — the date if you just made your regular payments with nothing extra. Here's the key: the payment you set on a debt IS its minimum, so the whole gap between the green line and the dashed line is that extra you send to debt — nothing else. Stop sending extra and the green line slides back down to the dashed one.
No — that's the catch, and the app is upfront about it. A single extra payment mostly saves you interest and nudges the date only a little. The eye-catching “X months sooner” is what you'd save by repeating that extra every month, which is why it's labeled “keep this up” / “a monthly habit.”
So both the slider and the Debt card show the two side by side: what this one month buys on its own (the interest it saves), and what the habit buys (the months sooner). Small now, big if it becomes a routine.
Drag the handle any time, or tap the little reset arrow to snap it back to putting everything toward getting ahead. It's safe to re-drag as often as you like — nothing here is permanent.
It shows only on the Month (calendar) view of the current or a future month, and only when there's a leftover to split — you have income, your bills don't use all of it, and there's something to put to work (a savings or giving goal, or a debt with room). If none of that is true, it's hidden.
Yes — step forward to any upcoming month and its slider is fully live. The “You're viewing [month]” banner at the top tells you which month you're shaping, and your choice saves for that month only without touching any other.
A future month you've never opened just previews the plan; nothing is written until you actually move the handle.
That's the quick-action bubble. It lets you act without opening the full editor: mark scheduled, mark posted/received, pull it back a month, push it to next month, remove it for this month, or tap the pencil for the full editor.
Only the actions that make sense for that entry are shown.
They move just that one occurrence to the same day in the next or previous month — the entry leaves the current month, but its normal date and all other months stay put. It's fully reversible.
Every quick action gives you a one-tap Undo that exactly reverses it, so a wrong tap is easy to back out. Tap OK to dismiss.
The popup has a “Don't show this again” option that opts you out of the confirmation for that specific action from then on — that action will fire instantly with no popup.
Only if you tell it to. Tapping Remove on a recurring item asks what you want: “Not due this month” just skips this one month (it comes back next month, and you can Undo it), “It's no longer needed” stops it going forward while keeping past months, and “It was a mistake” removes this month and all future ones. A one-time item just removes with a single confirm.
Removing the whole series works the same here as from the full editor's trash can and the Recurring list. The one-month skip is the same as setting that month's status to “Not due this month” in the editor.
In Settings you can choose Month or Periods. Month is one continuous calendar with your pay periods shaded in a single grid (the Monthly Flex slider sits on top of this one) — it's the default.
Periods breaks the month into a card per paycheck, each with its own income header and a mini calendar of the bills it covers.
The old text-only list was retired; both current views are calendar-based. If you had “list” saved, it now shows the Month view. Special groups like “Not Due” still appear as their own list regardless of view.
Yes — it's saved to your account (and cached locally so it loads instantly, even offline).
Open a bill filed under Loans or Credit and use its “Payoff plan” card to add debt details — current balance, interest rate (APR), and minimum monthly payment. Right after you save a new loan or credit bill, the app also offers to add these so you don't have to reopen it.
The debt links to that bill, so the payments you mark paid on the bill are what draw the balance down.
The minimum monthly payment is the least your lender requires — and it's the floor the Allocation slider uses: the lowest it will ever take that debt's payment. Set it to your true minimum. The bill's amount is what you actually pay in a given month, which the slider moves between that minimum and an all-out attack.
So to pay more (or ease off) from month to month, use the slider on your month view — the minimum stays put as the floor. It's also the yardstick for the “at minimum” what-if and your debt-to-income ratio. (We prefill it from your bill, so lower it to your real minimum to give the slider its full range.)
The app re-derives it every time from the balance you last entered plus the payments you've made since. Each payment first covers that month's interest, and only the remainder reduces what you owe.
Because it's recalculated live from your bills, it self-corrects — un-mark a payment or change an amount and the balance updates. If it drifts from your statement, edit the balance and it re-anchors to today.
Your debt-free date moves out, but your monthly payment does not automatically rise. The app is payment-fixed: you pay a set amount and the timeline is the result.
Your original starting point stays frozen, so on the dashboard curve new debt shows up as a step-up — the “new debt landed” moment. To clear it sooner, pay more than the minimum.
Several ways, all of which shorten payoff. The quickest is the monthly Allocation slider on your month view — drag toward Get ahead and this month's spare cash piles onto your focus debt. You can also raise the recurring amount on the linked bill (a permanent change to the baseline), mark a larger paid amount for a single month (just this once), or use the Extra/month or one-time lump controls in Debt Studio.
Paying more sends more of each payment to principal instead of interest, so you reach $0 sooner and pay less interest. Debt Studio shows a live “debt-free X sooner, save ≈ $Y” as you adjust.
Debt Studio pays all your debts together with rollover: each debt keeps its payment, and when one clears its freed-up money rolls onto the next — your total stays the same, so everything finishes faster.
You pick the order: Avalanche hits the highest interest rate first (saves the most, the default); Snowball hits the smallest balance first (quick wins); Custom lets you drag your debts (or use the up/down arrows) into any order you want. The list is in attack order, not finish order — a debt with a big payment can clear before a higher-priority one.
Your choice is saved and used everywhere — the payoff order, your debt-free date on the dashboard, and (below) which debt the Monthly Flex surplus actually lands on.
Yes — it decides which debt your money above the minimums lands on. If you have leftover after your budget, savings, and giving, the Monthly Flex slider puts it on your “focus” debt: the highest-APR one under Avalanche, the smallest-balance one under Snowball, or whichever you placed first under Custom. That shows up as a real, larger payment on that debt this month, while your other debts sit at their minimums.
Your minimums are the floor and never change — the slider only decides how much rides above them, and on which debt. Everything else (the “+50 / +100 Extra per month” box) stays a what-if projection.
Yes. Switching moves this month's surplus onto the new focus debt right away — it clears the extra off the old one (back to its minimum) and adds it to the new one. Nothing is charged twice.
The one exception is a debt you've already marked paid this month: that payment is done, so it keeps the amount it was paid at, and the new strategy takes full effect from your next unpaid payment. Each new month always starts fresh on your chosen strategy.
Loans auto-archive once the balance reaches $0 — the app records the month it cleared and moves it to your “Paid off” history.
Credit cards don't auto-archive because they revolve; a $0 balance just means “paid in full for now,” so the card stays and updates the next time you spend on it.
The app notices the payment ended and treats it as $0 rather than pretending you're still paying — so it won't keep projecting a payoff that isn't happening.
Because removing that bill would strand the debt, you get a prompt: if it's paid off you can archive the debt, or keep tracking it (it'll show no scheduled payment until you add one); if it was a mistake, you can remove the debt too or keep it.
Your payment isn't even covering the monthly interest, so the balance never falls. Raise the payment (or the minimum) above the interest and a real payoff date appears.
They answer slightly different questions. The dashboard's Debt card leads with your “keep this up” date — where you'd land if you sent THIS month's extra to debt every month from now on. Debt Studio shows the payoff at your minimum payments — what you already pay each month — without baking in the extra you put on this month, so it's the more conservative of the two. It matches the dashed line on the dashboard.
When you're not sending any extra to debt this month, the two match exactly. Send extra and the dashboard's “keep this up” date pulls ahead — that gap is the habit's payoff, and it's shown on purpose, not a glitch.
Open the Savings (or Giving) studio and add a goal. Only a name is required, but add a target amount and a target date to unlock progress tracking and pace.
Giving works exactly like Savings — the same tool with a different label and color — and defaults new goals to year-end so giving is framed annually.
An opt-in baseline everyone should have, even without a specific goal in mind. It's sized to your essential bills — housing, utilities, minimum debt payments, and other required costs (subscriptions and your savings/giving don't count). Tap “Start emergency fund” on the suggestion card and we set the target and switch on payday contributions for you.
While you still have debt it aims for 1 month of essentials — a starter buffer that funds AHEAD of any extra debt payments, so one surprise doesn't land back on a credit card and undo your progress. Once it's full it steps aside, and that money flows to your debt again.
When you become debt-free, we offer a one-tap “Grow to 3 months” to build the full 3-month safety net. You can dismiss the suggestion anytime, or start it later from the Savings studio.
When your last income period of the month has money left over after everything's covered, we offer to sweep that leftover into your Emergency Fund — one tap on the clock posts it, tap again to pull it back, just like marking any other line paid.
It's an easy way to turn a good month's surplus into a bigger safety net instead of letting it quietly get spent. Only the final paycheck offers it, so earlier surplus can still flow to that month's later bills first.
On the Emergency Fund card tap “Record a withdrawal” and enter how much you took out. Its saved amount drops to match, so it stops showing fully funded when it isn't — and if it had already finished filling, contributions restart so it rebuilds itself.
That's the whole point of the fund: spend it in a real emergency, and the app quietly goes back to refilling it. This works because a payday-contribution goal's progress is normally count-only-up; recording a withdrawal is what lets it come back down to reality.
It splits your one savings balance across your goals so you can see where every dollar is pointed — the Emergency Fund plus each goal's share, with anything not yet assigned shown as “Unallocated.” The slices always add up to your total saved.
Your single balance is split across all your goals so no dollar is counted twice, filling the goal with the nearest deadline first, then the next.
So $1,400 across a $1,000 goal due in March and a $2,000 goal due in June shows March at $1,000 (full) and June at $400. Each goal shows its share of the one pot, not the whole pot.
Yes — type a figure into a goal's “Set aside” box to pin its share (capped at its target). The rest of your balance then auto-splits across the other goals, still earliest-due-first.
Tap “Auto-split” to remove the pin. If your pins add up to more than your balance, it's flagged “Over-allocated.”
An opt-in that drops a small savings line onto every payday so the goal fills itself as you mark those lines paid — a debt paid off in reverse. Set a target and date, then turn on payday contributions (you need at least one recurring income).
The per-payday amount is fixed (what's left ÷ paydays remaining), so skipping or paying one short just moves the funded-by date later — it never balloons the next contribution.
In real life you don't make a separate transfer for every goal — on payday you move one amount to savings. So the calendar sums all of a payday's savings contributions into a single “Savings” rollup line (and giving into a “Giving” line), showing the one number to transfer. Tap the line to see the individual goals behind it and mark them paid as usual.
Because savings and giving now have their own lines, the “Bills” line shows only money owed to others — your transfers to yourself are no longer hidden inside it. Your “Free” total is unchanged; the money just sits on the line that describes it.
Removing one of a goal's payday lines (from the calendar bubble, the full editor, or the Recurring page) also removes it from the Studio — the app tells you so before it does. If the goal is funded from more than one paycheck, it keeps saving from the others; only its finish date slips a little.
If it was the goal's only contribution line, removing it stops the automatic saving, and the app asks whether to keep the goal (to track by hand) or remove it from the Studio too. To pause contributions without deleting anything, turn off payday contributions in the Studio instead.
For payday contributions, just mark the savings line paid on your calendar and the goal ticks up automatically. Otherwise edit the balance or pin a “Set aside” amount.
When the money actually leaves for its purpose, “Mark as paid” (or “Mark as given”) closes the goal out and deducts its share from your balance. You can undo that anytime.
A “lumpy” bill is one that recurs less often than monthly — yearly car insurance, a quarterly water bill, a semiannual HOA fee. Because the whole cost lands on one paycheck, it spikes that check and can make the whole month look “Short.”
A sinking fund fixes that by saving for the bill a little at a time: it sets aside a small amount on every payday so that, by the time the big bill is due, the money is already there. One scary $2,400 hit becomes a calm ~$200 a paycheck, and the month it lands no longer spikes. It's the same idea as paying off a debt, run in reverse.
The Savings studio scans your bills and, for each lumpy one that's big enough to actually hurt a paycheck, shows a “Smooth this bill” card. Small odds and ends (a $40 password manager, a $95 email plan) aren't suggested — smoothing those would just add clutter. Monthly bills are already even, so they're never suggested either.
Nothing is created until you tap “Smooth this bill.” When you do, we make the fund, size it to the bill's amount and next due date, and switch on payday contributions for you automatically.
Tapped “Not now” and changed your mind? The dismissal is saved so it won't keep nagging — use “Show hidden smoothing suggestions” at the bottom of the same card to bring it back.
Say your car insurance is $2,400, due every July, and you tap “Smooth this bill” in January.
January–June: each payday shows a small savings line (about $200 with two checks a month), rolled into your one “Savings” transfer. As you mark those paid, the fund fills. This money is treated as committed — the Monthly Flex slider won't sweep it to extra debt, because that bill is coming.
July: the $2,400 bill arrives, but the fund already holds $2,400. The calendar nets it out of that paycheck's “Bills” and shows a green “From fund” credit, so July stays calm instead of “Short.” After you pay it, tap “Paid it — reset” and the fund begins filling for next July.
A sinking fund is just a savings goal, so it sits in your Goals list with a blue “Smoothing” badge and a progress bar toward the next bill. Its target and date are locked to the bill so they can't drift out of sync — that's why it has no edit pencil or “Set aside” box like your other goals.
Two actions live on it: “Paid it — reset” draws the fund down after you've paid the bill and re-aims it at the next occurrence, and “Stop smoothing” turns it off and removes its payday contributions.
Because that money was already set aside over the earlier paydays, it isn't owed again from the paycheck the bill lands on. The calendar nets the covered amount out of that period's “Bills” total and shows it back as a green “From fund” credit, so the period reads calm instead of “Short.” Your “Free” for the period is unchanged — the money was simply saved earlier instead of paid now.
If the fund isn't full yet, only the part you've actually saved is credited; the rest still shows as owed that month.
No — it's the shared-balance split. Giving a goal an earlier due date (or pinning it) lets it take its share first, leaving less for the others.
Pin amounts with “Set aside” if you want a goal's share to stay fixed no matter what the others do.
No. They're identical tools but completely separate — separate balances, separate goals, separate money. Anything you do in one never touches the other.
They're your “north-stars” — one for Debt, one for Savings, one for Giving. Each rolls everything in that area into a single date and a curve you can watch move as you make progress.
The Debt card leads with “months to debt freedom”; the Savings and Giving cards show a “fully funded by” date for your whole set of goals.
Each dot is a milestone — on the debt curve it's the month a specific debt clears (bigger debts get bigger dots); on the savings/giving curve it's when a goal is fully funded.
Hover or tap a dot to see which debt or goal it is and its date. Anything landing in the same month shares a dot.
The left edge is anchored to where your journey actually began — the earliest month you started tracking that debt or goal — so the line shows the ground you've already covered, not just what's ahead. If nothing has aged a month yet, it starts at Today.
The Debt card shows once you have debt that actually pays off; the Savings and Giving cards show once you have at least one goal with a target date. They stack in priority order, so you can see all three at once.
A rolling 12-month view of income vs. bills, with summary cards, per-category insight tips, and two charts: “Income Allocation by Month” (bills, remaining income, and any deficit) and “Cash Flow” (income vs. bills over time).
The window is forward-looking: this month sits on the left and the next 11 are projected from your recurring bills and income — a “runway” so you can see whether upcoming months come out ahead or short before they arrive.
It's context-aware: past months show what you actually paid, the current month shows all bills, and future months show what's still pending — so history is real and the future is a projection.
Yes — email reminders are on by default. Each one lists what's overdue, due today, and due soon, with biller, amount, and date, plus a button to open your dashboard. They go out around 8 AM Eastern, and only on days something is actually due.
Settings → Reminders. Turn email reminders off entirely, or switch between Daily (with a 1/3/5/7-day lead time) and Weekly (pick the day and a 7/14/30-day look-ahead).
Reminders only send while your access is active and your email is verified.
Yes — it's an installable web app (PWA). Your browser can “Add to Home Screen” or install it, and it opens full-screen with its own icon. The app shell also works offline.
No — updates ask before refreshing rather than reloading out from under you mid-entry.
It's a web app first, and billing runs through the web on every platform. A Google Play version (wrapping the same site) is planned; there's nothing separate to install today.
Yes — a 90-day free trial with no credit card required. The moment you verify your email, the trial starts in the background and you're dropped into the full app. Nothing is charged when it ends; access simply pauses and you're taken to the subscribe screen.
When your email is verified — not when you register. (Google sign-ups are verified instantly.) It's tracked on the server, so it's the same across every device.
No. Trials are tracked per email on the server, including dot/plus variations and disposable addresses, so re-registering the same address won't grant another trial.
Monthly at $3.99/month, or Annual at $2.99/month billed $35.88 once a year (save ~25%). Both unlock the full app. You subscribe in an embedded checkout inside the app; promo codes are accepted.
No — if you subscribe with meaningful trial time remaining, your remaining free days are honored before the first charge. Once the trial has ended, checkout charges right away.
In the app, from the billing banner on your dashboard: Cancel subscription → confirm. It's scheduled for the end of your current paid period, so you keep full access until then and aren't charged again; the app then signs you out.
Changed your mind before the period ends? Use “Resume subscription” to keep it renewing.
That portal is for updating your card/payment details, not cancelling. Use the in-app Cancel button above. (The portal only appears once you've had a checkout — no-card trial users won't see it.)
The app links them: you confirm your password once, and Google is attached to the same account so either method works from then on.
Use the Reset Password page for a reset link; change your email from Settings → Account. All the emailed links are handled on one in-app page, even if a link lands on the site root.
More → Import. Download the Excel template, fill it in, and upload — everything is validated and nothing imports until the file is valid, with a preview before it commits. It's one sheet where each row's Category column decides whether it's income or a bill.
Import always adds new entries; it never updates or de-duplicates, so re-uploading the same file creates duplicates. If your template is out of date, re-download the latest one.
Yes. On a Loan or Credit row, fill the extra debt columns (balance owed, APR, minimum, credit limit, term, as-of month). When you provide a balance, the import creates a tracked debt linked to that bill automatically, so it's never orphaned.
Yes — More → Export gives you the current month as Excel (income and expenses) or a printable PDF summary of bills, income, and savings goals.
Trophies are badges you earn for good money habits — paying every bill, knocking out debts, filling your emergency fund, giving, and hitting milestones. Open them from More → Trophy Case.
Earned badges are lit up; the ones you haven't reached yet are dimmed with a progress ring that shows how close you are (like “4 / 12 months” or “68% paid down”), so a locked trophy pulls you forward instead of just sitting there empty.
You don't do anything special — BFOD watches your plan and awards them automatically as you go. Each badge says what it takes: pay off your first debt, save one month of essentials, reach a giving goal, and so on.
Many come in tiers — bronze, then silver, then gold — as you go further, with a few prestige trophies reserved for the big moments like going completely debt-free.
The consistency trophies count a month only when every bill for that month is marked Posted (paid). Bills left on Automatic or Scheduled still count as owed — the same as your “left to pay” total — so mark them Posted once they clear to keep the streak alive.
Streaks count forward from when you start using BFOD and reflect the months you actually reconciled, so a brand-new account builds its streak from here.
That pop-up celebrates trophies you've earned since you last looked. Tap “Don't show these again” on it, or switch it off any time under Settings → Trophy celebrations.
Turning it off doesn't stop you earning trophies — they keep accumulating quietly, and you can always browse them in More → Trophy Case.
Yes. Trophies belong to the plan, not to one login — so if you share your account, you both see the same Trophy Case and the same progress.