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Tackle cost of living pressures in this cost of living crisis by understanding your income and expenses before it becomes an issue.

Money Forecaster includes features to help you understand your Income and Expenses and view them at a monthly level. From the Money Forecaster Dashboard, you can view Income and Expenses in a monthly breakdown view and see your top Income and Expense items for each month directly on a heatmap.

What can you do in 30 minutes? You can watch your favourite TV show, relaxing is important! Maybe get some exercise and walk the dogs (all of them in this case!). But in 30 minutes you can also get started forecasting your cash balances.

For many people learning about your finances can feel like a chore, but this doesn't have to be the case. Give forecasting your cash balances a go when you next have a spare 30 minutes and you might be surprised how fast you start seeing results. You will start learning more about the expenses you have and how they could impact you in the future. You can also learn about trouble periods ahead, or, the forecast might be very positive and it's smooth sailing ahead for you.

Without a forecast, for many people their financial future is simply a mystery.

Money Forecaster has been purposely designed from the ground up to be easy to use right from the start. It provides an easy and straightforward way for you to run a forecast and get a clear picture of your potential financial future. Most importantly you don’t need any previous experience to start forecasting. All the key information to get started is provided and with this tool you are set to start learning lots about your finances.

What will you use your next spare 30 minutes for?

Remember we are here to help, contact us for more information or help.

Are you thinking of buying a second car? It’s a great feeling when you drive that new car towards home, the car with its trademark “new car smell” and soon to be a trusted new second resident in the garage. But have you made a good financial decision?

It’s very easy to get carried away spending more than you initially wanted to spend. You take a test drive in the premium model, because the model you really want is not available for test drive. Then you start thinking, maybe you would like more than the base model you have been researching for weeks.

But, can you really afford that premium model? This is a good time to take a step back and look at the long-term impact of this potential purchase. Buying that second car is the easy part, paying for it into the future is not always that easy.

Here is a great example where a comparison forecast can help you compare the long-term impact before making that final decision. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get what you need or want, but you have the power to make an informed decision first. For example, you can forecast forward 3 years and see what’s the potential difference to your cash balances based on the base model car versus the premium model car. What’s the impact and can you really afford it.

You will be able to answer questions such as, how much money will I have in a few years, can I really afford this and is now the right time to make that decision.

When running a comparison such as this don’t forget also about the Total Cost of Ownership. Be sure to include all expenses in your decision, such as insurance, monthly payments, the end of lease payout figure, servicing costs, annual registration, additional fuel now you have two cars, etc.

First off to determine your current Cash Balance you will add your Account Balances. All of your savings accounts, less your credit accounts total to make up your current cash balance. This is the starting point for your forecast, so keep these balances updated as they change over time.

The second step is where you review and add your Income & Expenses. These can be added as Recurring or One-Off and are used to calculate all of the changes to your cash balance over the forecast. You might already have a list of these or might need to start reviewing your bills and account statements to find them.

The third step is optional (you can always come back to this later) and is where you can Setup your What-if Scenarios. Scenarios allow you to make comparisons between different situations. There are two types of Scenarios for Income and Expense items, Base Scenario (included in all forecasts and on both sides of a comparison) and Comparison Scenarios (Income and Expense items that you would like to compare).

For Example, you might wish to compare your current situation against starting a New Job. For this scenario you could add all income and expenses to the Base Scenario and the specific differences that relate to the New Job, such as a pay increase and additional parking expenses to Scenario A.

You are now set to Start Forecasting on your Dashboard. All your efforts in Steps 1 - 3 now pay off. You can run a Single forecast or if you would like to compare one Scenario with another you can run a Comparison forecast.

You future cash balances now no longer need to be a mystery, you can easy visualise your forecast results:

• Chart - Visualise the forecast, including Goals and Historical balances.
• Heatmap - See hotspots in your Forecast such as Expenses or the % a balance changes.
• Daily Data - Get down to the precise detail with daily forecast data output.
• And many more to explore...!

Remember also that Money Forecaster can be loaded with extensive Sample Data to try out all of the features.

From time to time there might be particular months that have more expenses than others, affecting your cash balance. They might come up from nowhere and surprise you, but these particular months don't need to be a surprise. You can forecast and find those future problem financial periods using the Heatmap and identify those expenses that are out of the normal trend.

The Heatmap provides a quick way to identify these periods. The higher the Expense is as a Percentage of Income, the darker the colour becomes. Giving you an easy way to analyse the forecast.

In this example, highlighted in red are some large Quarterly expenses that are ranging from 65% to 125% of income. They show in a darker colour as they are higher than other months.

By Nov 2020 (highlighted in Green) we see that the Quarterly expenses have ended and the Expense as a Percentage of Income reduces down to 35% for the month of November.

The Heatmap is a useful tool for juggling when expenses should be paid. Maybe you might decide to move to monthly payments instead of quarterly? Or make adjustments to other expenses during this time?

The Heatmap can be viewed in five different modes to suit your needs:

• Expenses as a Percentage of Income (shown here)
• Income
• Expenses
• Balance
• Balance Percentage Change

Why not give it a go today.