Lessons

Essentials are smaller than you think

What it is

Rent, food, utilities, transport, medicine. Five lines. Those are your essentials — the things that do not stop when money is tight. Everything else is spending, and it goes in a separate box.

Why it matters

Later this app measures your savings in months of essentials. Use total spending instead and the target gets much larger. A target that large gets abandoned in week three. A small honest target gets reached. A large one gets admired.

The method

Write the five essential lines first. Then write what actually leaves in a month, everything included. Take the first away from the second. That gap is what you could cut if you had to.

Example

Salma first wrote PKR 78,000, which was everything she spends. The five essential lines came to PKR 55,000. Her savings target dropped by a quarter and turned into something she could actually reach.