Test a what-if scenario

The What-if planner lets you test a big change before you commit. Play out a "what if" — a new job, a move, or paying off a debt — without touching your real data, and stack more than one change into the same scenario if they happen together. Beyond Payday shows your net worth, monthly bills, and money left over side by side: today versus the scenario.

Money left over is your take-home pay minus all your bills (needs and wants) each month. Current income includes enabled recurring sources active today in your saved account time zone when available, otherwise your browser’s. The current baseline refreshes when that day changes. When a hypothetical income has no tax estimate of its own, its take-home estimate uses those current sources, including bonuses counted toward totals and payroll deductions capped across each person's jobs. Future, ended and one-time saved income do not change that estimate. Hypothetical additions remain the annual amounts you choose to test.

Try a sample without an account

Start with the demo introduction (opens in a new tab), or open the sample What-if planner (opens in a new tab) directly. Choose a saved sample scenario, then try it live: stack another change with + Add a change, adjust a change's items (including a stacked purchase's price, down payment, and other details), Pause or Remove it (with Undo), edit an existing hypothetical bill, remove a hypothetical item or a hand-added purchase, or restore an excluded real item. The totals panel updates using the same calculations as your own account. Reset sample restores the household.

These edits stay in browser memory and clear when you switch households or reload. Creating, renaming, or deleting a scenario; searching to remove a new real item; adding a new hypothetical item; and editing a hand-added purchase's details or a hypothetical income, asset, or debt entry require signup. The steps below describe your signed-in account.

Before you start

• The What-if planner is free, but only the account owner and their spouse can open it, and a spouse needs the What-if planner permission (Read, plus income, bills and assets access). Child and other members won't see it in the menu.
• A spouse with What-if planner Read but not Update gets View only: every control on the page still works, but nothing saves. A "View only — changes aren't saved" bar shows at the top, and Reset to saved drops any local edits. Add New Scenario, rename, and Delete scenario are hidden.
• It compares against your real numbers, so it helps to have your income, bills, assets, and debts entered first.
• Nothing you do here changes your real data — a scenario is its own saved set of "what if" changes.

Steps

1. Open What-if planner (opens in a new tab) from the menu, under Planning tools — it's the item shown with a Try what-if changes subtitle underneath.
2. Click the dashed Add New Scenario card. Under What's your scenario?, pick a card — for example New job or Moving — or Something else to start blank.
3. Check the name and the starting changes, adjust any amount, remove what doesn't fit, and click Create Scenario. (See Start from a card below.) It opens as the scenario's first change.
4. To model something else that happens at the same time, click + Add a change at the bottom of the page. Pick another card under What else is changing? — for example, stack Buy a car with Moving. It becomes its own section, in the order you added it.
5. To take out or add anything by hand instead, scroll to the Something else section. In Subtract from Current, click Search income, bills, assets, debts… and pick each real item you would no longer have.
6. In the Add to Scenario panel (also in Something else), click Add Item.
7. In the Add Scenario Item box, choose a Type (Income, Bill, Asset, or Debt), give it a Name, and enter the amount. The amount field is labeled Gross Salary, Amount, Current Value, or Outstanding Balance depending on the type.
8. For a bill, set its Frequency and the Essential (Need) toggle. For income, you can add estimated deductions and an Estimated Tax Rate to see take-home pay. Click Add Item.
9. Read All changes together — the totals panel showing Money left over, Bills, and Net worth, each before → after — to see the combined effect of every change and hand edit. Use the frequency selector to view bills and money left over daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Your changes save automatically as you work. There is no separate Save button. What you changed flashes green with a small check once it is saved, or stays outlined in red if the save fails.

Start from a card

Each card finds the things you already have that the change touches and fills in what it usually adds. Anything not taken from your own numbers is a round starting point to change — not a recommendation.

One policy that covers more than one thing, like "Home & auto insurance", is shown under its own name and set to Replace at today's amount, so you can enter your new quote. Selling the car or home doesn't remove it.

Each of your items gets three choices:

• Replace — take today's bill out and add a new one, filled in at today's amount for you to change. Used for things you'll still pay after the change, like property taxes, insurance and utilities.
• Remove — it goes away. For a home or car this says Sell: the home (or car) and its loan come out, and the cash left after paying off the loan is added. For a debt it says Pay off.
• Keep — no change. As soon as a change has any kept items, they fold behind N items you're keeping · Show.

Each row shows its choice at a glance. A removed item's row turns red and its amount is crossed out. A row set to Replace, Change amount, Sell, Trade in or Pay off turns green. A replaced item shows today's amount next to the box for the new one. A kept row stays plain.

When an open scenario has a Lose a job change switched on, a line says losing a job is about how long your money lasts, month by month, and links to the SHTF plan. It shows only if you can open the SHTF plan. See Build a SHTF plan.

Job cards only look at paychecks from a job (W-2, 1099, self-employment, commissions, other) — never a pension, Social Security, benefits, rent or support you receive. Each row shows today's amount (like "$45/mo") so two bills with the same name are easy to tell apart. Bills are matched by category first. A bill filed under a general category (like Insurance or Professional Services) is matched by words in its name, such as "homeowners", "hazard", "HOA", "lawn", "pest" or "repair". Turned-off bills, business items, and $0 bills are skipped. Tap Also add? chips to add things you don't have yet; each one gets an amount to change. For a car or home, the price and down payment are filled in and editable right in the change's section; click More options to set the interest rate, term, and where the down payment comes from. See Model buying a house or car.

Stacking more than one change

A scenario can hold up to 10 changes, each its own section, in the order you added them — for example Buy a car stacked with Moving. A few combinations aren't allowed (only one housing change at a time, Cut costs once, one change per real item), and each section has its own Pause / Resume and Remove change (with an inline Undo). See Stack more than one change in a scenario for the full rules.

How the comparison works

• All changes together is the totals panel: every active change plus your hand edits in Something else, combined. It's a side column on wide screens and a slim "Money left over" bar pinned to the top on phones. Each section's own numbers are its share of the total, so they add up to the panel exactly.
• Money left over shows what's left after bills, plus the change from your current amount.
• Bills shows your total bills before → after, at the view frequency you've picked (no Needs/Wants split on this panel). Because a bigger bill is worse, an increase here shows in red and a decrease shows in green — the opposite of the other rows.
• Net worth shows your assets minus debts for the scenario, in whole dollars. This row always shows absolute values — the frequency selector does not change it.
• The change on each row is a small colored arrow with a dollar amount — green for an improvement, red for a worsening. A change under about 50 cents shows no arrow.
• Subtracting an asset also subtracts its linked debt and that debt's monthly bill automatically. Subtracting a debt also subtracts its linked bill. This keeps the comparison consistent — you won't be left paying a mortgage on a house you removed.

Ask Beth or a connected AI assistant to change it

With Beth's Read & write turned on, an owner or spouse with What-if planner Update can ask Beth to build, change, or delete a scenario in chat instead of using the page — for example "start a what-if scenario for buying a house" or "in my Moving scenario, change the down payment to $50,000." Beth shows a card naming every item it would touch — for example Create a what-if scenario or Change your what-if scenario — with the value before and after and the combined effect on your money left over, bills, and net worth. Nothing changes until you tap Confirm, and deleting a scenario or removing a change, an added item, or an older purchase is double-checked in chat first. Undo on the card puts things back for 24 hours (see Undo a change Beth made). A connected AI assistant with a Read & write connection can do the same through its own approval screen. Beth and the connector never invent an amount, price, rate, or account — they ask for anything you didn't give them, and this stays hypothetical: nothing in your real income, bills, assets, or debts is touched.

Good to know

• Income without a payer name is listed by its type, such as Pension, when you choose what to remove and review the changes.
• Point-in-time only. The What-if planner compares today against the same day with your changes applied. It does not project years forward, and it does not model compounding, inflation, or taxes over time. For long-term questions like retirement, use the retirement projection instead.
• Each scenario vs. today. Every scenario is compared against your real current numbers, not against another scenario. The cards let you see each one's result side by side.
• You can save many scenarios. Each one is a card on the page with its name, each stacked change's name, and how much your money left over and net worth would change — so you can build "New job", "Move to Texas", and "Pay off the car" and compare them at a glance. Click a card to open it. Changes save as you go; click Done (or press Escape) to close it.
• Rename or delete a scenario after you open it: the pencil next to its name renames it, and the red trash button (Delete scenario on a phone) deletes it after you confirm.
• On a phone, only one section is open at a time and the totals bar stays pinned to the top as you scroll; on a wider screen, any number of sections can be open and the totals panel sits beside them. Which scenario is open is kept in the page's address, so a link or the browser's back button goes straight back to it.
• Removing a subtraction doesn't undo the cascade. If the app auto-removed a linked debt or bill, deleting the asset's subtraction won't bring them back — remove each item you no longer want subtracted.
• A hand-removed item can also belong to a change. If a change already removed something and you also remove it by hand in Something else, removing the change later won't bring it back — Something else shows it as Also removed by X.