How envelope budgeting works in WealthJot

Five steps — from listing categories to automatic rollover — using the exact logic WealthJot's own budget tracker runs.

1. 1. List your spending categories — Group your expenses into a short list of categories — rent, groceries, dining, transport, entertainment — rather than tracking every line item separately. Fewer, broader categories are easier to stick to and to review month over month.
2. 2. Set a monthly limit per category (the envelope) — Give each category a monthly_limit — the amount you're allowing yourself to spend in that envelope this month. This is your BudgetSpec: a fixed ceiling per category that WealthJot compares your actual spend against.
3. 3. Log expenses as they happen — Every expense entry with a category rolls up into that category's actual spend for the month. Anything logged without a category (or with one your budget doesn't cover) falls into an 'uncategorized' bucket so spend is never silently dropped from the picture.
4. 4. Read actual vs. limit as the month goes — WealthJot's budgetVsActual sums each category's spend and computes pct_used = actual / limit × 100, so you can see at a glance which envelopes are on track and which are close to (or over) their limit before the month ends.
5. 5. Let unused limit roll over automatically — Categories roll over by default: whatever you didn't spend last month (monthly_limit minus last month's actual, floored at zero) carries forward and adds to this month's effective limit — so under-spending one month gives you more room the next, with no manual carry-forward needed.