Age of Money is how many days pass between money arriving and you spending it. It's on your home screen.
An age of 5 days means you're spending money you earned last week — one missed paycheque from trouble. An age of 35 days means this month's spending is funded by last month's income, and a late payment is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
How it's calculated
Money is spent oldest-first. Each outflow is matched against the earliest income that hasn't been spent yet, and its age is the number of days between the two dates. The reported figure is the average age of your last 10 outflows.
Worked through:
Income Mar 1 $2,000.00
Income Mar 15 $2,000.00
Spend Mar 20 $500.00 → funded by Mar 1 income → 19 days old
Spend Mar 22 $1,600.00 → $1,500 left from Mar 1 → 21 days
→ $100 from Mar 15 → 7 days
Each dollar is aged by where it actually came from, and the amounts weight the average — a large purchase counts for more than a small one.
Only on-budget income and spending count. Card charges, loan payments, and transfers between your own accounts don't create or consume income, so they don't figure. Starting balances and imported opening rows are excluded too — they'd otherwise show as impossibly old money.
What's a good number
| Age | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under 15 days | Living on money that just arrived |
| 15–30 days | Building a buffer |
| 30+ days | Spending last month's income — the goal |
| 60+ days | A comfortable cushion |
30 days is the target. At that point you're spending money you earned before the month started, so your budget stops depending on when a paycheque lands.
How to raise it
There's one mechanism: spend less than you earn, consistently. Age of Money rises on its own as the surplus accumulates. There's no way to raise it directly, which is what makes it honest.
Two things help:
- Budget the money you actually have, never money you expect. This is already how Ready to Assign works — you can only assign cash that exists.
- Fund irregular bills monthly with goals, so an annual premium doesn't drain the buffer in one go.
Why it moves oddly
It dropped sharply. A large purchase consumed a lot of recent income. Because the figure averages only the last 10 outflows, one big spend moves it noticeably. It recovers.
It's very high after an import. Imported history can front-load old income, making early figures optimistic. Give it a month of real activity before trusting it.
It doesn't show yet. It needs enough income and spending to match against. New budgets won't have a figure straight away.
Don't optimise it. Delaying a bill would raise the number without improving anything. Treat it as a thermometer, not a target.