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Getting Started with HoneyPlan

Building a household financial plan doesn't have to mean building a spreadsheet from scratch. HoneyPlan gives you a living, month-by-month view of your cash flow — income, expenses, and running portfolio balance — without the complexity.

Step 1: Start with the demo

No account needed. Hit Try Demo from the home page and you'll land in a pre-filled plan with a typical American household: two salaries, a mortgage, a car payment, groceries, utilities, and the usual subscriptions — plus discretionary expenses like concert tickets, vacation, and dining out that you can toggle off to see their impact.

Your changes save automatically in your browser. Try editing the salary, removing a subscription, or adding a vacation budget. The projection grid updates instantly — including your FI number, savings rate, and estimated retirement timeline.

Step 2: Customize income and expenses

Click Income in the top nav to see your income sources. Each item has a title, amount, and recurrence — monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, yearly, or one-time. You can add a partner salary, a side hustle, rental income, or any other income stream.

Click Expenses to manage your spending. Items are shown as a flat list with a category column — Housing, Transportation, Food, Personal, Savings, and Entertainment.

Step 3: Read the projection grid

The main Plan page shows a row for every month. For each month you see:

Click any Income or Expenses cell to see a breakdown of exactly what's in it. Click the eye icon next to any line item to toggle it off from that month forward — and watch your balance and FI date update in real time.

Step 4: Switch to Year view

The Mo/Yr toggle in the top right collapses months into annual rows. Set the dropdown to 20 or 30 years to see the full FIRE runway — when your portfolio crosses your FI number, a FI Target Reached marker appears in the grid.

Step 5: Adjust settings for your situation

Go to Settings to change your plan name, starting balance, and annual portfolio growth rate. The default 7% matches the S&P 500's inflation-adjusted historical average. Set it to 10% for nominal returns, or 0% for a conservative cash-only projection.

Add family members in Settings to see their age alongside each month's numbers — useful for planning around milestones like kids starting college or a partner's early retirement.

Step 6: Create an account to unlock everything

When you're ready, create an account. Your demo data migrates automatically:

No credit card required.

Ready to try it?

The full demo runs in your browser — no account, no email, no credit card.

Open the Demo