What should I do when I've overspent halfway through the month?

Step 1: Find your real number

Take what's in your accounts now and subtract every bill still due before payday: rent, loan payments, subscriptions, utilities. What's left is your flexible money for the rest of the month.

Step 2: Turn it into a daily limit

Divide your flexible money by the days until you're paid. If you have 6,000 left and 12 days to go, you have 500 a day. A daily figure is much easier to stick to than a monthly one, because each day starts fresh.

Step 3: Protect the essentials first

• Pay bills that carry late fees or affect your credit first.
• Pause anything you can: deliveries, new subscriptions, non-urgent shopping.
• Plan meals from what's already at home for a few days.

Step 4: Find what caused it

Look at your spending by category. Usually one or two things did the damage: a big one-off, or many small spends in one category. Knowing which helps you decide whether this was a bad month or a pattern.

Step 5: Fix next month, not this one

If it was a one-off, plan for it next time with a small buffer. If it's a pattern, the budget may be unrealistic. Raise that category and cut somewhere else so the plan matches how you actually live.

How Balance helps

Once you've added your income and fixed bills, Balance's Home screen shows how much you've spent today against a daily figure, and how much of the month's budget you've used. Analytics show which categories drove the overspend, and you can ask "what did I spend the most on this month?" for a quick answer.