Left over and saved

These two words look similar but mean different things. TumelLife keeps them apart on purpose, so the numbers you see always mean exactly one thing.

Left over

Left over is your income minus your expenses for the period you are looking at. That is all it is. If you earned $2,500 and spent $1,650, you have $850 left over.

It is arithmetic on what you have recorded. It is not a bank balance and it is not cash in hand, because TumelLife only knows what you have entered.

Saved

Saved is money you have actually put into a savings goal. It only counts contributions you recorded yourself. If you put $500 into your Emergency Fund this month, your saved figure is $500.

Why they are separate

Having money left over does not mean you have saved it. You might spend it later, keep it available, or put some of it away. That decision is yours, and TumelLife will never make it for you by quietly treating leftover money as savings.

The reverse happens too. You might contribute more to a goal than you had left over this month, using money carried over from before. That is perfectly normal, and TumelLife does not treat it as a problem.

What the Overview shows

Open Money and the Overview tab shows, for each currency: income, expenses, left over, and saved. Choose the period at the top: this week, this month, this year, or a custom range.

If a figure would be negative, left over is shown as zero rather than a minus number. Spending more than you recorded as income does not necessarily mean anything is wrong, so TumelLife does not present it as alarming.

Common questions

Why does my left over say zero when I have spent more than I earned? Left over never goes below zero on screen. It simply means nothing was left after your recorded expenses for that period.

Do savings contributions reduce my left over? No. Contributions are not expenses, so they never change the left over figure. They are shown separately as saved.

Why are my currencies shown separately? Because adding them together would need exchange rates, and TumelLife does not guess at those. Each currency is totalled on its own.