Cash Coverage
Whether the cash you hold right now covers what has already been promised to it.
Updated
The Question It Answers
A budget tells you how much of a limit is left. A net worth figure tells you what you are worth on paper. Neither answers the one people actually lose sleep over: if I honoured everything I have already committed to, would the money in my account cover it?
That is this card. Cash on one side, commitments on the other, and the gap between them stated plainly.
Cash here means chequing and savings only. Investments and retirement accounts are not counted, however liquid they feel - the question is about cash, and selling something is not the same as having it.
Reading the Card
The headline is either $420.00 spare or Short by $185.00, with a Fully funded or Short badge beside the title.
Under it sit two bars on one scale: cash on hand above, committed this month below, each with its total beside it. Because they are drawn against the same ruler, the empty tail on the shorter bar is your surplus or your shortfall - the headline figure, drawn rather than stated. Every row you can switch on or off is its own coloured block in one of them.
A last line appears whenever more money is still scheduled to arrive this month. It names two figures - how much is coming, and what the month ends on once it has - so a shortfall your next paycheque closes reads as one rather than as a hole. With nothing left to arrive, the line is not there at all.
It answers for this month, on purpose
There is deliberately no second figure for the year. Counting a whole year of annual budgets against today’s cash makes a perfectly healthy person read as Short every month of the year - true, unactionable, and the alarming half of a question nobody settles in one day. The month figure is the one you can act on.
Two other states you may see:
- Balances are still syncing. A connected account that has not reported yet would show near-zero cash against your full commitments, which is a frightening number and a false one. The card waits instead.
- Nothing to cover yet. Neither side has anything in it. Add an account and a budget and the verdict appears.
Choosing What Counts
Tap the card. The sheet behind it is not a second copy of the answer - it is the switches that decide what goes into it.
- Cash on hand. A row per kind of cash - chequing and savings - each with a switch.
- Committed this month. A row per commitment, same shape, same switches.
- How much of your debt should count. One choice covering every balance, and it appears only if you carry one.
The two lists work the same way, because they are the two halves of one comparison. Each row carries a coloured dot matching its block in the bars on the card, so you can see which part of the picture a switch moves. Close the sheet and the answer has moved with it.
A row you switch off keeps its figure, struck through, so you can always put it back. Rows with nothing in them are hidden rather than shown as a list of zeroes.
What Counts, and What Starts Off
The default is the honest answer for an ordinary month, not the strictest one. Your choices are saved to your account and follow you to every device.
| Row | What it counts | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Chequing | Balances in accounts filed as chequing. | On |
| Savings | Balances in accounts filed as savings. | On |
| Unpaid bills | Bills still due before the month ends. A bill already tied to a budget is left out here, because that budget is counting it. | On |
| Monthly budgets | What is left of this month across your budgets. With WorryFree switched on the row is named WorryFree Budget and carries your remaining discretionary limit. | On |
| Goal contributions | What your dated goals ask for this month, never more than what is actually left to put in. | On |
| Goal Funds | Money sitting in a Goal Fund that you have not spent. | On |
| Annual budgets | The unspent remainder of your yearly budgets, spread over the months left in the year. | Off |
| Credit cards | Your card balances. | Off |
| Line of credit | Your line of credit balances. | Off |
| Pending card charges | Purchases on a synced credit card or line of credit that your bank has approved but not yet posted to the balance. Only charges count - a pending refund or payment is left out. | Off |
The four that start off are the ones that answer a question nobody asked. A balance you carry on a card is not due this month - the minimum payment is, and if that payment matters to you it is already a bill or a payoff goal, both of which still count. Money earmarked for a renewal eight months out is not a claim on this month’s cash either. Switch them on and the card gives you the stricter answer, because then you have said it applies to you.
Pending charges, if you clear your card in full
A purchase your bank has approved but not yet posted is money you have spent and not yet paid for. If you clear your card every month it is cash already committed, which is exactly what this card is asking about - switch Pending card charges on and it counts. It sits last in the list, under the goal rows, and only appears when you have something pending.
Check it against your bank before you switch it on. Some banks already include pending purchases in the balance they report, and where they do, counting both would charge you for the same purchase twice. Compare the figure on the row against what your bank shows as pending - if the card balance above already contains it, leave the switch off.
It counts charges from the last 45 days. A pending charge normally posts within a few days, and occasionally a bank forgets to tell us one has cleared - the cut-off is what stops a forgotten one being counted against you for good. It is also the one row whose own setting decides it: the "How much of your debt should count?" question below is about balances you carry, and a pending charge has not reached one yet, so that answer leaves this row alone.
Savings you would not actually spend
Both kinds of cash start counted, because this is the money the question is asked about. If you keep a balance you do not consider available - an emergency fund you would rather not touch - switch Savings off and the answer gets stricter. It stays listed with its figure struck through, so the switch is always there to put it back.
Debt Is One Dial
A single question governs every debt row, and it only appears once you actually carry a balance: How much of your debt should count?
| Choice | When it is right |
|---|---|
| The whole balance | You clear what you owe every month, so the balance genuinely is due. |
| Only what I plan to pay | You carry a balance. Enter what you intend to pay and only that counts. |
| Don't count debt | Leave every balance out entirely, whatever the row switches say. |
The switches beside Credit cards and Line of credit decide which kinds of debt the dial covers. The dial decides how much of them counts. If you are counting both kinds, the sheet shows how your figure was divided between them.
Dollars or a percentage, whichever you think in
Picking Only what I plan to pay opens two fields directly under that choice: an amount, and the same thing as a percentage. Type in either and the other follows, so “$400 a month” and “10% of what I owe” are two ways of saying one figure - and you never have to work one out against a balance that moves. The percentage is of the debt you are counting, so 100% is the whole of it.
The figure is saved when you tap away from the field, not as you type, or the verdict above would jump through every half-finished number. Leave it empty and nothing counts.
Cadence cannot see your statement balance, only the current one, which is why the choice is yours to make rather than ours to guess. See Credit Cards & Loans for how those balances arrive.
How Goals Are Counted
The Goal contributions row is what your goals ask for this month: the monthly amount each dated goal needs to stay on pace. A goal with no target date asks for nothing, so the row is effectively “the goals you gave a deadline”.
It is capped at what is genuinely left to put in. Three days before a target date the pure pace figure becomes an absurd number; the cap is what keeps the row sensible.
Some goals are deliberately left out:
- Goals tracking something that is revalued rather than funded - a house, a vehicle, a liability. Nobody pays cash into those, so a “required contribution” is an artefact of the target date.
- Debt goals, but only while you are counting a debt balance. The balance is already on the commitments side and the goal payment is a slice of it, so counting both bills the same dollar twice. With the balance rows off - the default - a debt payoff goal counts like any other.
- Goals marked as tracking something, with nothing recorded to say what.
What a goal has already saved is never subtracted
Only what a goal still asks for counts. The amount already put aside is not taken off your cash, because for a goal you maintain by hand there is nothing saying which account holds it - and subtracting money that may never have been in your chequing account invents a shortfall out of thin air.
If the Answer Looks Wrong
- Short by more than you expected. Open the sheet and read the rows. The usual cause is a switch you turned on - a card balance, a year of annual budgets, or pending card charges your bank had already put in that balance - rather than anything about this month.
- Nothing pending, but you know there is. Pending charges come from synced accounts only, and not every bank reports them. A card you added by hand, or one whose bank posts every purchase straight away, has nothing pending for the row to show, so the row does not appear.
- Less cash than you have. Two things to check. Only chequing and savings count at all, so an account filed as an investment or a retirement account is never in the figure - see Synced Accounts for how one is classified. Then open the sheet and check the Cash on hand switches: a kind of cash you turned off is still listed, with its figure struck through.
- A bill you expected is missing. Bills attached to a budget are counted through that budget instead, so they are not in the bills row. Counting them in both places would charge them twice.
- The figures look stale. The card reads the same settled figures as the rest of the Budget page, so refreshing the page refreshes the card with it.