Paycheck Planning

Ramsey Solutions · EveryDollar · iOS/Android & Web

Gave 750K monthly active users a way to see how long their paycheck will last (+39% trial starts, $1.8M impact).

Users could track past spending, but couldn't easily see whether their money would last until their next paycheck. I designed a forward-looking experience that made income timing and expenses easy to understand and act on.

The flows of Paycheck Planning on mobile and web.

The Problem

Users with irregular income couldn’t confidently answer a simple question:
“Will I run out of money before my next paycheck?”

The app focused on past transactions, making it difficult to understand future cash flow or adjust spending in time.

My Role

LEAD MOBILE DESIGNER & WEB CONTRIBUTOR

I was the primary designer for mobile and another designer was primary for web, but we handed work back and forth across both, alongside a PM and about 10 engineers. To start, I dug into past user feedback and worked with customer success to learn how often users asked for this and why. I tested the flows with users over Zoom, and the web designer and I ran sessions together so both platforms stayed in sync and we could catch the hangups unique to each.

WHAT SHIPPED

  • Introduced paycheck-based planning instead of static monthly budgets

  • Allowed users to project spending across future dates

  • Added risk signals to show when they were likely to overspend

  • Designed for quick adjustments so users could stay on track

Screens from Paycheck Planning across mobile.

Screens from Paycheck Planning across mobile

Decisions & Trade-offs

SHIPPING WITHOUT A CUSTOM CALENDAR

I wanted the calendar users already knew from budget due dates, but our Xamarin picker couldn’t auto-deselect today’s date, and a custom component would have delayed launch by weeks. I judged an extra tap to be a smaller cost than a later launch, so I rewrote the date field to clearly show every selected date.

CLARIFYING PAY CYCLE OPTIONS

Early versions of the flow led to confusion around pay cycle selection, so I expanded and clarified the available options based on user feedback.

OTHER CALLS THAT SHAPED V1

  • Focused on forward-looking projections instead of historical tracking

  • Delayed visibility of income until expected dates to reflect real cash flow

  • Introduced buffer-based planning to prevent overcommitting funds

  • Prioritized quick adjustments so users could recover from risk

Constraints

Solutions needed to leverage existing UX/UI patterns across web and mobile to maintain consistency and reduce development time.

Screens from Paycheck Planning across web.

Screens from Paycheck Planning across web

What Changed

Users could quickly understand how long their money would last and adjust spending before running into issues. This increased confidence in managing irregular income and significantly improved conversion.

Hindsight

Would expand flexibility by allowing custom income frequencies and bulk editing of items and dates to reduce manual effort. Future iterations could incorporate AI-driven suggestions for income timing and budgeting based on past behavior to further support planning.

Components of Paycheck Planning.
Components of Paycheck Planning.

Components of Paycheck Planning