Personal cash-flow forecasting
Your balance says you're fine.Ask it about September.
A bank balance is a photograph. Runway carries it forward through everything you know is coming — the rent, the paycheck, the tax bill, the renewal you forgot about — and tells you the month it stops being enough.
One email when it opens up. Nothing else.
Runway
Clear for
2 months
Reserves today
$12,726.93
Reserve floor
$3,000.00
Lowest point
$686.93
Sep 2026
Clear through Aug 2026. Sep 2026 is the first month to end below your $3,000.00 reserve floor. 2 of the 13 months ahead are short.
A sample forecast. Yours is built from figures you record.
The same money, read two ways
What a balance says
$12,726.93
True, and comfortable-sounding. It says nothing about the deposit landing in eight weeks, or the tax bill before it, or that both fall in the same quarter as the annual renewals.
What a forecast says
2 months of runway
Same money, same day. You're clear until Sep 2026, when the reserves drop to $686.93 — and there are weeks in hand to do something about it rather than a fortnight.
Thirteen months, in one picture
A trough you'd never see coming month by month
Every month here is survivable on its own. Read them in sequence and two of them fall through the floor — because a tax bill and a deposit happen to land back to back, and the recovery takes a quarter.
This is the whole argument for a forecast. Not that any single month is alarming, but that the shape only exists across them.
2 months in the middle of the window end below the $3,000 floor, and then it recovers. A month-to-month budget never shows you this, because every individual month looks survivable.
And the working
Every figure can show where it came from
A forecast you can't interrogate is a guess with better typography. Each month's closing balance is what it opened on, plus what came in, less what went out — and all of it is on the page.
| Flow | Jul 2026now | Aug 2026 | Sep 2026 | Oct 2026 | Nov 2026 | Dec 2026 | Jan 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income | |||||||
| Paycheck | $6,450 | $4,300 | $4,300 | $4,300 | $4,300 | $4,300 | $6,450 |
| Contract work | — | $1,200 | $1,200 | $1,200 | $1,200 | — | — |
| Total in | $6,450 | $5,500 | $5,500 | $5,500 | $5,500 | $4,300 | $6,450 |
| Planned expenses | |||||||
| Rent | $1,850 | $1,850 | $1,850 | $1,850 | $1,850 | $1,850 | $1,850 |
| Groceries | $620 | $620 | $620 | $620 | $620 | $620 | $620 |
| Car insurance | $480 | — | — | $480 | — | — | $480 |
| Savings transfer | $1,200 | $500 | $500 | $500 | $500 | $500 | $1,200 |
| Irregular | Tax bill$5,400 | House deposit$14,000 | |||||
| Total out | $4,150 | $8,370 | $16,970 | $3,450 | $2,970 | $2,970 | $4,150 |
| Baseline | $15,026.93 | $12,156.93 | $686.93 | $2,736.93 | $5,266.93 | $6,596.93 | $8,896.93 |
Money in is green; money out is plain ink, because a planned expense is routine. Red is kept for the one thing that is actually wrong — and it never travels alone, so the months below the floor also carry the stripe and the warning glyph.
Getting started
- 01
Record what you hold
Each account and its current balance. Two minutes, and it's the only part you repeat — usually once a month, when a statement lands.
- 02
Describe what moves
Income and expenses with their real cadence: monthly, fortnightly, quarterly, annual, or once on a date. Both directions.
- 03
Read your runway
Thirteen months of closing balances, the months that fall through your floor, and the one number that says how long you're clear for.
There is no import, no bank connection and no setup weekend. The walkthrough asks for your balances and your two or three biggest flows, and you have a forecast worth reading before you've entered everything.
Built around how money actually arrives
One number, on the way in
How many months your reserves hold at the rate money is actually moving, and the month they stop. Everything else on the page is the working behind it — but you can close the tab after the first line.
A floor you set, not a zero
Running out isn't the thing you want to be warned about; getting uncomfortably close is. Tell Runway the lowest balance you're content to see and it measures every month against that, not against nought.
Irregular money, counted properly
A quarterly insurance bill, an annual renewal, a fortnightly paycheck that lands three times in some months. Runway counts each in its own cadence rather than smearing it into a monthly average, because the average is exactly what hides the bad month.
A date passing isn't proof
A bill due on the 3rd may not be pulled until the 20th, so Runway keeps expecting it until you tick it off. This month's list is a checklist: tick what has moved, record what the accounts now hold, and the forecast starts from the truth again.
Change one figure, see the whole year move
Rent going up in March, a contract ending in August, one month where the car needs work. Enter it once with its real dates and the thirteen months redraw around it.
Nothing connected to your bank
Runway asks for balances you type in, not credentials it holds. There is no bank link to authorise, no aggregator in the middle, and nothing to breach beyond the figures you chose to record.
What Runway isn't
- Not a budgeting app. It doesn't categorise spending or tell you where the money went. If that's the question, Runway is the wrong tool and won't pretend otherwise.
- Not connected to your bank. No credentials, no aggregator, no automatic import. You type the balances.
- Not advice. It does arithmetic on figures you gave it. What to do about the result is yours.
- Not finished. It is being built in the open and used daily by the person building it. Early access means early.
Questions worth asking
Does Runway connect to my bank?
No, and it's not planned. You record balances yourself. That means a minute of typing when a statement lands, and it means there are no banking credentials, no aggregator, and no continuous read of your transactions sitting behind a login.
How is this different from a budgeting app?
A budget is about the month you're in: what's left in each category, whether you're overspending now. Runway is about the months you aren't in yet. It doesn't categorise a single transaction — it answers one question, which is how long what you have lasts against what's coming.
How is it different from a spreadsheet?
Honestly: a spreadsheet can do this, and if yours works, keep it. Runway is the version that doesn't break when you edit it — cadences that understand months of different lengths, a floor applied consistently, and a projection that starts from today's balance every time you open it rather than from whenever you last dragged the formula down.
What if a bill doesn't come out when it's due?
It goes on expecting it. A date passing is no evidence that money moved, so Runway keeps counting a landing until you tick it off in This month. That's also why the forecast can't quietly drift out of step with your actual balance.
How far ahead does it look?
Thirteen months — this one and a year of them. Far enough for an annual bill to show up where it lands, and near enough that the figures still mean something.
Is there a password?
No. Signing in sends a link to your email address and following it signs you in. There's no password to choose, forget, reuse or leak.
What will it cost?
That isn't settled yet, and I'd rather say so than name a number I might change. Everyone on the early access list hears the answer before anyone is asked to pay anything.
Find out how long you're clear for
Runway isn't open to everyone yet. Leave an address and you'll get one email the day it is.
One email when Runway opens up, and nothing else — no newsletter, no drip campaign. Unsubscribing is a reply.