Financial goals

A goal is a declared target: a debt to clear, a savings figure to hit, an emergency-fund buffer to build, or a category of spending to cut. Goals tell keel what matters most to your household, so the coaching narrows around it.

You'll find them on the Goals screen, with a detail page per goal and a short creation wizard.

How it works

Four goal types

• Clear a debt — pick a credit card or loan and set a target date for paying it off.
• Save toward a target — pick a savings account, set a £ amount and a deadline.
• Build an emergency fund — pick a number of months of expenses to cover; keel does the £ maths.
• Cut category spending — coming soon.

Up to 5 active goals

Each household can have up to five active goals at once. The "Add goal" button disables at the cap; archive, pause or complete one to add another. Achieved and abandoned goals don't count.

One primary goal

Exactly one active goal can be primary at any time. The primary goal gets more weight in the coaching — the dashboard and Coach page reference it more often.

• Your first goal automatically becomes primary.
• Later goals are never primary by default — you explicitly tap "Make primary" on a goal's detail page to swap.
• Creating a new goal never demotes the existing primary.

This is deliberate: optimising for three or four things at once usually means achieving none of them.

Creating a goal

The wizard has three steps:

1. Pick a type. Tap any of the four cards — the wizard advances immediately.
2. Pick what it's linked to. For "Clear a debt", the credit card or loan; for "Save toward a target", the savings account. Emergency fund skips this step.
3. Set the target, deadline and why. Name the goal, set the £ target, pick a deadline. A live pace preview shows what you'll need each month. Optionally add a "Why now?" note to your future self.

Emergency-fund goals

Emergency-fund goals work a little differently in the final step:

• Instead of typing a £ target, you pick a number of months of spending to cover (1, 3 or 6 presets, or a custom number up to 24).
• keel multiplies by your rolling 3-month average spend: "You spend ~£2,008/month. 3 months means £6,023 total."
• If keel can see your savings accounts from your imports, it shows the gap: "You have £3,782 saved — so the goal is £2,242." The goal tracks the amount you still need to add, not the total.
• If you're already covered, you'll see that celebrated explicitly — and the start button stays disabled, because you don't need this goal. Pick more months if you want a bigger buffer.

See your emergency fund for the wider buffer picture.

Editing a goal

Tap "Edit goal" on the detail page. Change the name, target, deadline or why, and the pace recalculates. Only active goals are editable — achieved, abandoned and paused goals are read-only until you reopen or resume them.

The progress chart

Each goal's detail page shows month-by-month progress:

• A solid line tracks your actual cumulative progress — deposits for savings goals, repayments for debt goals.
• A dashed line shows the expected pace: a straight line from zero to your target across the months to your deadline.
• A reference line marks the target.

If your line tracks the dashed one, you're on pace. Below it, you're behind; above it, you're ahead.

Completion is detected, not declared

There's no "mark complete" button. keel detects when you've actually hit your goal — your savings deposits reach the target, or your linked debt clears — and moves the goal to the Achieved section on its own. Detection happens when you open the Goals screen and on a daily background check.

This keeps "achieved" honest: it only ever means the target was genuinely reached.

When a goal is reached, keel drops a quiet note into your inbox. Goals belong to the household, so both partners see it — reaching a shared goal is a shared moment.

Once achieved, a goal stays achieved. If a late payment temporarily reopens a debt you'd cleared, the goal doesn't un-complete. You can manually reopen an achieved or abandoned goal from its detail page if you want to keep tracking.

Category-spending goals have no natural finish line — there's always another month — so they're never auto-completed. Use Pause when you want to stop working on one.

Pausing

Tap "Pause goal" to stop working on a goal without giving up on it. Paused goals move to their own section, free up an active-goal slot, and stop influencing your coaching. Tap Resume to bring one back any time; its pace recalculates from the resume date. Pause is one tap with no confirmation — it's fully reversible.

Archiving (abandoning)

If a goal no longer makes sense at all, tap "Archive goal" and confirm. The goal moves out of your active list, labelled as abandoned, and you can reopen it later if circumstances change. Use Abandon when you're done with a goal for good, and Pause when you're only stepping away.

Why it works this way

• Goals are an intention layer. They wrap the things you already track — debt, savings, budgets — with a declared target, deadline and priority. They don't replace those mechanics.
• Savings progress counts deposits, not balance. Progress is the sum of deposits to the linked account since the goal started. Withdrawals don't subtract, partner deposits count, and interest is excluded. The goal measures your intentional saving action, not what the account happens to hold today.
• The emergency-fund target is the gap. If you want a £6,023 buffer and already have £3,782 saved, the goal tracks the £2,242 you still need to add.

Good to know

• Two cards from the same provider. Debt-repayment progress is matched by the merchant name on the transaction, so two cards with the same lender currently share one progress bucket. A known limitation.
• Already-covered emergency fund. If your savings already exceed the months-of-spend target, the start button stays disabled — pick a longer buffer or you simply don't need the goal.
• Deadlines must be in the future. The submit button is disabled if the deadline is today or earlier.
• Switching types mid-wizard clears any partial name, amount or deadline, so values don't leak between goal types.

FAQ

Can I have more than one primary goal?

No — exactly one at any time. Creating a new goal doesn't demote the current primary; tap "Make primary" on the new goal if you want to swap.

Why doesn't my savings progress drop when I withdraw?

Progress measures cumulative deposits since the goal started, not the account balance. A savings goal measures what you've put in, not what the account holds today. Partner deposits into the same account count too.

How do I mark a goal as complete?

You don't — keel detects it. When your savings hit the target or your linked debt clears, the goal moves to Achieved automatically. If you want to step away from a goal that hasn't been reached, use Pause (reversible) or Abandon (for good).

What happens to my goal if the linked account is closed?

The goal keeps its history but records no new progress. Consider pausing or archiving it.

Does keel auto-pay or auto-save toward my goal?

No. keel tracks; you act. You make the deposits or payments yourself, and keel records them as progress when they show up in your imports.

The chart is empty or flat. Why?

The goal is new, or no qualifying transactions have arrived in the linked account yet. Deposits show up once your bank's transactions reach keel; debt repayments are matched against the debt's merchant name.