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Open Net Worth Docs

Your first month

Here’s what a first month with Open Net Worth typically looks like, end to end.

Day 1 — accounts and starting balances

You add your accounts: checking with $4,250.00, savings with $18,000.00, a credit card carrying $612.40, and a brokerage account holding some index funds. For each, set a Starting balance dated today — not years of history, just a clean baseline. The moment the last account is in, the Overview shows a real net worth number for the first time.

Day 1 — a first budget

Open the Plan tab. Ready to Assign shows $4,250.00 — cash in your on-budget accounts with no job yet. Assign some: $1,600.00 to Rent, $500.00 to Groceries, $150.00 to Dining Out, $200.00 to Transport, $300.00 to a “New laptop” target six months out. Ready to Assign drops to $1,500.00 — unclaimed on purpose, rather than forced into a category it doesn’t belong in yet.

Week 1 — spending shows up

Buy groceries for $63.40 and log it (or Lucius does, from a linked source) against Groceries — its balance drops from $500.00 to $436.60. Eat out for $28.00 against Dining Out. Ready to Assign doesn’t change when you spend — only when you assign new money or move it between envelopes.

Week 2 — an overspend, and what actually happens

Spend $580.00 on flights, categorized to Travel — an envelope you never funded. Its balance goes negative: −$580.00. It doesn’t borrow from another envelope or vanish; it sits negative until you move money into Travel or assign new money to cover it next month. A flag, not a silent correction.

Month-end — envelopes roll over

Unspent balances carry forward — the $436.60 left in Groceries and the $300.00 in New laptop both start next month exactly where they left off, not reset to zero. A negative balance, like Travel’s, does not carry forward as debt — it’s absorbed into next month’s Ready to Assign instead, so you start clean with a smaller number to assign.

Ongoing — net worth, tracked automatically

Every transaction, price update, and currency conversion feeds straight into your net worth — no “recalculate” button, nothing stored as a static number. Brokerage gained $340.00 overnight and you paid off $200.00 of the credit card? Both show up on the Overview next time you look, already netted together. See Net worth for exactly what counts and what’s excluded.

Where to go from here