How keel analyses your spending

This article explains the analytical framework behind the dashboard month card and the reports: how keel splits your spending into fixed and variable costs, how the month card maths works, and the Needs/Wants/Savings guideline.

How it works

Fixed vs variable costs

keel splits your spending into two kinds:

• Fixed — Housing & Utilities, Transport, Banking & Finance, and Childcare. Costs that recur regardless of behaviour.
• Variable — everything else. Spending you can actively control.

This split drives the month card calculation and coaching insights. The four fixed groups aren't user-configurable for now.

The month card calculation

Without budgets, your remainder is simply total income minus total spending.

With budgets, the calculation gets sharper: income, minus the higher of your fixed budget or your actual fixed spending, minus variable spending, minus anything uncategorised. Fixed costs use the higher of budget or actual because you can't underspend your rent — if it hasn't gone out yet, it's still committed.

Daily pacing

Daily pace = remainder ÷ days remaining in the month. It answers: "how much can I spend per day for the rest of the month?"

It only shows when the remainder is positive and there are days left — keel doesn't show a negative daily pace when you're in deficit.

Needs / Wants / Savings

The Summary tab shows the 50/30/20 guideline:

• Needs (target: under 50%) — fixed costs plus groceries and essential variable spending
• Wants (target: under 30%) — discretionary variable spending
• Savings (target: 20%) — intentional savings plus unallocated surplus

Each row shows the amount spent, your actual share of income right beside it ("£3,683 · 31% of income"), a fill bar, the target, and a status pill (such as Under control, Over target, or On target). Because the actual share and the target are both percentages, you can see at a glance not just that a bucket is over, but by how much.

The share of income is hidden when keel doesn't yet know your income for the month.

Why it works this way

• Unallocated surplus is shown honestly — money left over at month end isn't claimed as "savings" unless you deliberately moved it.
• The month card uses your data month, not the calendar month — it reflects what your imported data actually covers.
• Percentages, not pound targets — the whole point of 50/30/20 is that it scales with your income. What counts as "too much" on Wants depends on what you earn; a pound target would hide that.

FAQ

My Wants row says "Over target" — over by how much?

Look at the two figures on the row. The amount line shows your actual share of income (for example "31% of income") and the target line shows the guideline ("Target: under 30%"). The gap is the difference between them. The status pill just confirms the direction.

Why don't I see the percentage on some months?

The share of income only appears once keel knows your income for the month. Until then, the row shows the pounds figure on its own rather than a percentage based on an unknown total.