Getting Started: A Complete Walkthrough

This is the complete walkthrough of FinProjection. By the end you'll have entered your full financial picture - income, expenses, debts, and assets - and you'll know how to read every part of the result: the net worth chart, the month-by-month cash flow table, your debt-free date, and the warnings that flag a month where the money doesn't add up. No spreadsheet, no signup, and your data never leaves your browser.

How FinProjection works

You describe four things - what comes in, what goes out, what you owe, and what you own. FinProjection then simulates your finances one month at a time: it collects income, pays expenses, services debts (paying the highest-interest one down fastest), grows your assets, and carries the result forward to the next month. Repeat that across years and you get a full projection of your cash flow, debt-free date, and net worth.

Setting up your plan

1. 1

   Open the app

   From the homepage click Launch App. First-time visitors are taken into a short setup guide that walks through each input; you can re-run it anytime from the Setup Guide link in the footer.

2. 2

   Pick single or family, then a starting point

   Choose whether you're planning for yourself or a household - this only tailors the examples. Then either pick a sample scenario (pre-filled and great for exploring) or an empty plan to enter your own numbers.

Entering your numbers

Whether you use the setup guide or edit a plan directly, you're filling in the same four sections. Keep the first pass simple - you can refine every value later.

We'll follow one example throughout - a single professional earning about $5,200 a month - so the numbers tie together from input to result.

1. Income

Add each source of money coming in - salary, a partner's income, side work. Give each a name and an amount, and mark whether it's monthly or annual (a yearly bonus, say). The app converts everything to a consistent monthly view for you.

2. Expenses

Add what you spend: rent or mortgage, food, transport, utilities, insurance. As with income, each expense can be monthly or annual, so a once-a-year premium lands in the right month rather than being smeared across twelve.

3. Debts

For each debt - credit card, car loan, student loan, mortgage - enter three numbers:

• Balance - what you currently owe.
• Interest rate (APR) - drives how fast interest piles up.
• Minimum payment - the least you must pay each month.

These three are everything the app needs to compute your debt-free date. Any spare cash beyond the minimums is automatically applied to your highest-interest debt first (the avalanche method), which clears your debts in the cheapest possible order.

4. Assets

Add what you own that holds or builds value - cash, high-yield savings, retirement and brokerage investments, home equity. Each asset can grow over time, and that compounding is where most of your long-term net worth comes from.

Reading your results

Once your numbers are in, the dashboard shows everything at once. Here's each piece and what to look for.

The summary cards

At the top, a row of cards gives you the headline figures at a glance: your debt-free date, projected net worth, and your monthly income, expenses, and savings(what's left after expenses and minimum debt payments). This is your at-a-glance health check.

The net worth & debt chart

The chart plots two lines across the whole projection:

• Net worth - your assets minus your debts. You want this climbing up and to the right.
• Total debt - falling toward zero as you pay it down.

The chart also marks key milestones: a debt payoff marker the month your debts clear, and an insufficient funds marker (⚠) on any month where your income can't cover everything. Hover any point to see the exact figures for that month.

The cash flow table (month-by-month breakdown)

Below the chart, the cash flow table is the detailed ledger - one row per month, with columns for:

1. Time- the month and year (with a separator at each year's end).
2. Total income and total expenses for the month.
3. Debt payment made and remaining debt afterward.
4. Total assets and the resulting net worth.
5. A status column with quick icons: a green check ✓ when a debt is paid off that month, a blue shield when your emergency fund is fully funded, and a red alert ⚠ when the month has a shortfall.

Click any row to expand it. The breakdown opens into four columns - income, expenses, debt payments, and asset growth - itemizing every line for that month, including the interest paid on each debt and the growth earned on each asset. It's the answer to “where exactly did the money go this month?” By default the table shows the first 24 months; use View all months to see the entire projection.

Spotting (and fixing) a shortfall

A shortfall is a month where your income can't cover your expenses and required debt payments. FinProjection detects this automatically and makes it impossible to miss:

• The chart shows an insufficient funds milestone (⚠) on that month.
• The table row gets a red alert icon and auto-expands so you see it.
• Inside the breakdown, each underfunded expense or debt payment shows its shortfall amount in red, so you can tell exactly which obligations couldn't be met and by how much.

If you see one, it's telling you something useful: in that month your plan doesn't balance. Common fixes are to reduce an expense, lower an extra debt payment, or check that an income source is set to start early enough. Adjust an input and the whole projection - chart, table, and warnings - recalculates instantly.

What to explore next

You now have a complete projection and know how to read it. Next, make it realistic - model raises, inflation, and a longer horizon - in Advanced: Growth, Inflation, and Time Range.