How to use Ripen

Safe to spend today first: what you can spend each day until your next pay arrives, after the bills due before then and your cushion. Then where you stand this month, the month's checklist of payments, and your next dream.

Tick each payment when it is done. Paid a different amount? Press the amount and type what you paid. A tick is counted from what you saved with it, so changing the plan later never changes what you already paid.

It needs to know what is in the bank. Add your account under Wealth with its balance, and the number appears.

Press Add Income, choose what it is, type the amount and how often it comes. Add the day it is paid, and Next 30 Days shows it on that day.

Press Record Income at the bottom. Each source shows what your plan expected, what has come in and what is still to come.

Add the rise with the month it starts. Ripen works out what it does to your debt free date and your dreams.

Press Add Expense, type the amount and pick a category. A note is optional and only you see it.

Payments that come every month and do not change much: rent, insurance, school fees, phone. Add them once with the day they are due, and they appear on Home's checklist and in Next 30 Days.

If a category or note sounds like an investment or a loan payment, Ripen asks before saving: record it as an investment, as a loan payment, or keep it as an expense. Money you invest is still yours, so it is counted as saved, not spent.

Charges that repeat every month in what you recorded or imported, each with what it costs in a year and the company's site to manage or cancel it.

Yes. Read a bank or card statement, and every line is shown to you to check before anything is saved. The file is deleted as soon as it is read.

Press Add Loan, then type what is owed, the monthly payment, the interest rate and the day it is due. Your latest statement has all four.

Press Record Payment at the bottom, or tick it on Home. Ripen tracks every payment made and what is still owed.

Which loan to clear first, on the Loans tab, compares two ways. Dearest First (the avalanche method) puts spare money on the loan with the highest rate and saves the most interest. Smallest First (the snowball method) clears the smallest balance first for a quick win. You choose; Ripen shows the debt free date for each.

Open the loan and press Check With Statement. Type the figures from your latest statement, and Ripen corrects what is owed, the rate and the payment.

Money lent or borrowed within the family. The other person accepts it, and from then on it shows on both sides, with every repayment.

Press Add a Dream, type what it is and what it costs. Ripen works out the month you can afford it from what is left after your bills and loans.

Ripen saves for dreams in the order you put them, after your loans and your emergency savings. Move a dream up, clear a costly loan sooner, or buy it on a loan, and the month moves.

Yes. Save the down payment, and when you buy it on a loan the dream becomes that loan under Loans.

Bank accounts, deposits, funds, shares, bonds and retirement accounts, each at the value you give it and what goes into it every month.

What you own minus what you owe. Ripen keeps it once a month and draws it as a line, so you can see it grow.

Your retirement accounts grown to the age you choose, against what that age would need. Change the age, the growth or the price rise to see the difference.

Profit and loss, month by month and for the whole year, from what you recorded, never from the plan.

Yes, as a picture, with the amounts hidden unless you choose to show them.

Start a trip and invite friends by link. Everyone records what they paid. At the end, each person sees exactly what they owe and to whom, and marks it settled.

No. Friends join with a free account and see only that trip, never your book.

Yes. Add a photo of the receipt to an entry; only the people on the trip can see it. Paid in another currency? Choose it and the rate, and Ripen converts it to the trip's currency.

Each month ahead: what comes in, what goes out, what clears your loans and what is saved for your dreams, until you are debt free and every dream is bought. The figures you type are facts; every plan figure is a suggestion.

The card on Plan with this month's income with every part of it given a job: fixed payments, loans, living costs and saving. Anything left without a job is shown, so you can give it one.

Each day with what comes in and goes out, and your bank balance walked forward. If it would dip below your cushion, Ripen warns you before it happens.

They have no day yet. Add the pay day to an income, or the due day to a payment or loan, and they move to the right day.

Only you. Your own book is private. A family book is seen by the people you invite to it, and nobody else.

Start a family book under Books and invite each person by link. Each one signs in with their own account.

An email every Monday morning: what you spent last week, what is left of the month and the bills coming up. It is off until you turn it on under Account.

Press the flag beside your book's name at the top. The country sets the currency, how numbers and dates are written, and the month the tax year starts.

Under Account, or at ripen.pro/delete-account. Everything is deleted, except a payment record the law requires us to keep.