It's a Sunday in August 2026, and the chalet is on the iPad again. Aanya has it zoomed in on the balcony. "Dad. Look at the balcony."
Dev looks. He also looks, without meaning to, at the balance on his phone: $14,212. Flights for three, ten nights, the chalet — about $9,000. More than enough. He worked that out a week ago.
And still there's the thing he doesn't say at the table. He has been short exactly once: August 2019, when the school fees and the car insurance landed in the same week, and the school's finance office sent a polite email he can still quote. He would do a great deal never to get that email again.
Careful, for years
The spreadsheet came first, in the flat with the radiator that clanked. Every cell was his, and he loved it the way you love something you built. It broke the month Priya's consulting started paying on its own schedule; he spent a Saturday finding the cell that had lied to him. The spreadsheet only knew what he typed into it, and it only ever told him about now.
YNAB came next, for three good years. It taught him to give every dollar a job, and he is better with money for it. He still remembers the evening the "New kitchen" category turned green at $12,000 — he sent Priya the screenshot with no caption, and she sent back three exclamation marks. Ask YNAB about this month and the answer was always clear. Ask it about next August and there was no answer — on purpose. YNAB plans this month, and says so. Goodbudget and EveryDollar, the envelope apps he tried along the way, stop in the same place.
Monarch was the first one Priya used with him: the house, the index funds, both cars, and her as a partner at no extra cost — the whole family on one screen. Her rupee account showed up in dollars, number for number. That made them laugh, and then it made her stop opening it. The forward view sat on the $199.99 plan and described itself as "directional".
Quicken Simplifi was the first app that looked forward at all — up to a year, their page says, and that's what it did. It ran to the following August and said fine. He remembers the relief. It was telling the truth about the twelve months it could see.
None of them lied to him. Each answered the question it was built for. The question he has at the table tonight — can we do this, and will it come back to bite us? — is one he never knew an app could take.
So he looks
Dev doesn't carry next year's bills around in his head. Nobody does. But Marvin has the next two years laid out on his phone. So after Aanya is in bed, he opens Marvin and swipes forward to August 2027 to see what is waiting there. The insurance renewal. The school fees. The tax instalment. All within nine days.
On the way past June, he sees something he had completely forgotten: Priya's consulting contract ends. The second paycheck stops in June 2027. Without noticing, he had been counting on it all the way to December.
So he asks. "How am I doing? Can we do Switzerland at Christmas for about nine thousand?"
What Marvin says
Marvin does the maths with everything it knows — the contract ending in June, the December that always runs heavy in this house, the nine days in August — and gives him the honest answer. Go at nine thousand, and the payday before that August week comes up about $1,800 short. The same week as 2019.
Then, the way a friend would, it offers the ways out. Push the trip to the following Christmas, when Priya's next contract will be in. Or go this year for fewer nights, and keep a little aside each month from September for the renewal. It lays both out on the timeline so he can watch each one land.
Priya comes down for water and finds him with the phone face-up on the table. "What?" "August. And your contract." "Oh. June." "June."
What they decide
They talk it through at the table, with the next two years between them. Eight nights instead of ten. The school fees paid in August, a month early — the school allows it. A little set aside every month from September for the insurance. Dev moves each piece on the timeline and watches August move with it, until the last week of August 2027 sits there flat and ordinary — with Priya's contract ending, or without it.
"Eight nights," he says. "Eight nights," she says.
They go. Aanya gets her balcony. And when that week in August 2027 comes round — the insurance, the fees, the tax, nine days, one paycheck instead of two — it is covered, because Dev saw it fourteen months earlier and quietly arranged for it. No email.
Marvin didn't say no to the trip. It did the maths, told him the truth, and helped him find the version of yes that worked.
This is cashflow
Having the money today is not the same as still having it when the bill comes. That is true for a household, a company and a government alike. Cash lives in time, not just in a balance. Know before you start.
We put Marvin next to ten apps and a spreadsheet, on their own published numbers — including the places they beat us. See the full comparison →
Dev, Priya and Aanya are made up. The bills, the dates and the $1,800 are an example, not a forecast for anyone in particular.
For what the two-year view is for on an ordinary Tuesday, see the forecast verdict. For why the price is what it is, see less costly, not cheap.