My Money Center

Quick “How Do I…?” Guide

Getting Started

My Money Center helps answer three basic questions:

What happened to my money? Use Past Transactions, All Transactions, and Reports.

What is coming next? Use Forecast and Repeating Income & Bills.

How much is safe to spend today? Use Safe Spending.

Entering amounts

Money coming in must be entered as a positive amount, such as 1500.00. Money going out must include a minus sign, such as -75.00.

Understanding Your Balance

Which bank balance should I use?

Use the bank balance before pending purchases or deposits are included. Banks may call this the current, posted, or ledger balance.

Avoid an available balance that already includes pending transactions when those same transactions are still marked Not Cleared in My Money Center. The goal is to avoid counting the same transaction twice.

If a transaction is already included in the balance you entered, mark it Cleared. If it is not included, leave it Not Cleared so Forecast can add or subtract it separately.

Forecast

Forecast shows today and the future. It starts with the Starting Balance for the Forecast, then adds income and subtracts bills and purchases in date order.

Transactions dated today stay on Forecast even after you mark them Cleared. This keeps today’s activity visible instead of making it disappear into the past.

• Current Cleared Balance is the starting point used by Forecast.
• Lowest Expected Balance is the lowest point produced by the transactions currently entered.
• Balance After This shows the expected balance immediately after each row.

Forecast can only include what has been entered. Missing deposits, bills, or purchases are not included.

A Scheduled label means the transaction came from Repeating Income & Bills. Deleting one occurrence does not remove the repeating setup.

Safe Spending

Safe Spending shows how much can be spent each day without using money needed for upcoming bills or the amount you chose to leave untouched.

It works in the time between the repeating income deposits you choose. That might be a week, two weeks, a month, or another schedule.

• Safe Daily Spend is the amount per day.
• Total Available for Everyday Spending is the full amount for the current period.
• Spending Days Left includes today but not the day the chosen income arrives.
• Money Kept Aside is excluded from everyday spending.

Spend less today and tomorrow’s amount may rise. Spend more and later amounts may fall. My Money Center recalculates it for you.

Income and bills do not need to be identical every time. Enter your best estimate and edit the individual Forecast transaction when the actual date or amount is known.

Scheduled bills usually should not be selected as everyday-spending categories because Forecast already includes them separately.

Transactions

A transaction is any money coming in or going out.

• Forecast shows today and future transactions.
• Past Transactions shows dates before today.
• All Transactions shows everything together.

Use Edit or Delete beside an individual transaction. Deleting a transaction from a repeating schedule removes only that occurrence.

A Name may identify a store, person, company, employer, income source, bill, or anything else connected to the transaction. A Note and Reference Number are optional.

Repeating Income & Bills

Use this page for income, bills, and other expenses that happen again on a schedule.

Available schedules

• Every week on the weekday you choose
• Every two weeks on the weekday you choose, beginning with the next date you enter
• Same day each month
• First, second, third, or fourth weekday of the month
• Last weekday of the month
• Last day of the month
• Last business day of the month (Monday through Friday)
• Last Friday of the month

Your best estimate is enough. Edit a particular occurrence on Forecast when its amount or date is different.

In Use turns the repeating item on or off. Add Automatically decides whether future transactions are added for you. These choices appear when editing a repeating item.

How Far Ahead controls how far into the future transactions are added. Added Through shows the last date already filled.

Highlight on Forecast helps an important deposit or bill stand out.

Budgets

Budgets are optional. Watch one category, several categories, or none at all.

Budgets help you watch category totals during a calendar month. Safe Spending looks ahead and shows how much is safe to spend each day during the current Safe Spending period.

Stop Tracking removes only the monthly budget. It does not delete the category or any transactions.

Credit Card Payoff Planner

The Credit Card Payoff Planner helps you build a payment strategy for using extra money toward credit card debt. It can help you decide which card to focus on first based on how much of the credit limit you are using, the card’s APR, or a balance of both goals. It also shows how your balances may change over time if you follow the plan.

Enter each credit card’s current balance, credit limit, APR, and required minimum payment. Then choose how much extra you want to put toward your cards each month and the strategy that best matches what matters most to you.

• Improve the credit factors I can control focuses on how much of each card’s credit limit you are using. The planner works toward lower usage levels and redirects extra money to another card when appropriate.
• Save the most interest focuses extra payments on the card with the highest APR.
• Balance both goals considers how much of each credit limit you are using first, then favors the higher APR when cards are in the same usage range.

The planner shows what it recommends for your first payment and estimates what could happen over the months ahead. Use Explain to see why a payment is being recommended and how the estimate was calculated.

Understanding the projections

Future balances are estimates, not exact statement balances. The planner assumes you make the required minimum payment shown for each card, the extra amount you enter is in addition to those minimum payments, you do not make new purchases or cash advances, and interest continues to accrue. Estimated monthly interest is based on the APR you enter.

Actual credit card interest, minimum-payment calculations, statement dates, payment timing, fees, and other activity can make your real balances different from the projections.

Credit limit usage

One factor that can affect credit scores is how much of your available revolving credit you are using. For example, a $1,500 balance on a $2,000 credit limit means you are using 75% of that card’s available credit.

The planner uses levels such as 75%, 60%, 50%, 30%, and 10% as planning milestones. These are not guarantees, magic score thresholds, or predictions of how many credit-score points you may gain. Credit scoring depends on many factors.

Once all cards are at or below 10% used, the credit-focused approach shifts toward paying the highest-APR card to help reduce interest.

Using your plan in My Money Center

If you decide to follow the planner’s recommended extra payments and want those payments reflected in your regular My Money Center forecast, update them manually.

If a credit card payment is set up under Repeating Income & Bills, edit that repeating expense to include the amount you plan to pay. For example, if the required minimum is $35 and you plan to pay an additional $100 each month, your planned payment would be $135.

Also check Forecast for credit card payments that have already been created. Changing a repeating expense does not change transactions already listed in Forecast, so those may need to be edited separately.

As balances, minimum payments, APRs, or the amount you can afford to pay change, return to the planner, update the information, and adjust your My Money Center repeating expenses or Forecast transactions as needed.

Saving your planner

Your Credit Card Payoff Planner information is saved automatically in the browser you are using. You can also use Export Planner Backup to save a separate backup containing only the planner information, and Import Planner Backup to restore it later or move it to another browser or device. This planner backup is separate from My Money Center’s regular Backup & Restore.

Use Export Results to CSV if you want a condensed copy of the current projection.

When things change

Come back anytime. Use Edit Cards to change, add, or remove cards, or Change My Plan to adjust your extra payment, projection period, or goal. The planner will recalculate from where you are now.

Reports

Choose one question for a simpler view or Show me everything for the complete standard report.

• How much money came in and went out?
• Where did my money go?
• How much am I spending on everyday things?
• How has my spending in a category changed over time?
• What income and bills are set to repeat?
• What if something about my income or bills changed?
• Show me everything

What If? lets you temporarily remove or change repeating income and bills, or add a hypothetical monthly amount. Running a What If never changes saved transactions, repeating items, Forecast, or Safe Spending.

Use Time period, From, Through, and Cleared? to choose what the standard reports include.

Categories and Names

Categories describe the kind of money involved. Names identify who or what the transaction is connected to.

Change a name to fix spelling, capitalization, or wording. Combine entries when two Categories or Names mean the same thing.

Combining does not delete transactions. The transactions simply use the Category or Name you choose to keep.

Settings and Setup

Settings controls the Account Name, Starting Balance for the Forecast, Forecast Length, Safe Spending choices, and desktop-data migration.

Review or Change Setup reopens the Welcome steps with current choices already filled in. Transactions and other data remain in place.

Backups, Restore, Export, and Start Over

Create Backup downloads a dated .mmc-backup file containing the complete My Money Center data stored in this browser.

Restore Backup replaces the current browser data with a selected My Money Center backup. A safety backup of the data being replaced is downloaded first.

Import from the Desktop Version is a one-time migration tool for a specially prepared .mmc-migration file. It replaces the browser data with the imported desktop data and downloads a safety backup first.

Export downloads a CSV file of your transactions that can be opened in spreadsheet software or shared with someone helping you review your records. A CSV is not a complete backup and cannot restore every setting, budget, category, name, or repeating setup.

Erase Everything and Start Over removes My Money Center data from this browser and returns to Welcome setup. A safety backup downloads first.

Technical Details

This version of My Money Center is a browser-local app. Its financial data is stored in the browser using IndexedDB. The website files provide the app itself; your financial records are not stored on the web server.

Because browser storage is specific to a browser profile and website address, the same app opened in another browser, on another computer, or under a different local address starts with separate storage until you restore or import data there.

Your browser may also offer persistent-storage protection, but backups are still the safest way to protect against device loss or cleared browser data.

Help for My Money Center browser app 1.0.10