Daily Life Cost: what one day costs you
The problem
Section titled “The problem”Monthly totals hide how you actually live. Rent is paid once a month, insurance once a year, school fees once a term. On the day they leave your account they look huge, and on every other day they are invisible.
A more useful question is: “What does it cost me to exist for one day?”
How Porul handles it
Section titled “How Porul handles it”The Daily Life Cost card on your home screen answers that with one number, per day. It has two parts that add together.
1. Your fixed bills, spread evenly. Each bill is annualised and divided across 365 days. A monthly bill counts 12 times a year, a quarterly bill 4 times, a yearly bill once.
fixed per day = sum of (bill amount × 12 ÷ months between payments) ÷ 365
2. Your logged spending, averaged. Porul adds up every expense you have logged and divides it by the number of days you have been logging, with a floor of 365 days.
Why the 365-day floor? Without it, one big purchase in your first week would make your daily cost look enormous. With it, a large first expense is spread across a full year, and once you have logged for more than a year Porul uses your real average.
If you haven’t logged anything yet, Daily Life Cost is simply your fixed bills per day.
Set up your fixed bills
Section titled “Set up your fixed bills”Tap the Daily Life Cost card to open Fixed Expenses.
- Enter your expected monthly income at the top (used by the Budget too).
- Add, edit or delete bills. For each bill, set the label, amount, how often it repeats (monthly, quarterly, yearly), the next due date, a category, and its nature and domain.
- Porul starts you with a set of common default bills. Edit them or remove what doesn’t apply.
- Select bills and mark them paid to log them as expenses in one go.
- A small due bills pill in the top bar shows how many bills are due and unpaid. It never sends pop-ups or notifications.
Loans you add to your budget appear here as EMI bills, so your loan payments are part of the number. See Loans.
What it doesn’t change with
Section titled “What it doesn’t change with”The card does not move when you switch the Today, Week, Month or Year toggle on the home screen. That toggle only affects the Need / Want / Oops breakdown. Daily Life Cost is meant to be a steady number, not a moving one.
There is also a longer view of your Need / Want / Oops split over your whole history in Analytics.
Example
Section titled “Example”Your fixed bills are:
| Bill | Amount | How often | Counted per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rent | 900 | monthly | 10,800 |
| Internet | 30 | monthly | 360 |
| Insurance | 1,200 | yearly | 1,200 |
Total per year: 12,360. Divided by 365: about 33.86 per day.
You’ve just started, so nothing is logged and your Daily Life Cost is 33.86.
Over your first month you log 3,650 in expenses. Because of the 365-day floor, that adds 3,650 ÷ 365 = 10.00 per day. Your Daily Life Cost becomes about 43.86 and will settle as you keep logging.