Pocket Runway - Know what's safe to spend before your next paycheck
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Pocket Runway is a personal finance app that budgets by paycheck, not by month. It reserves bills due before your next check and shows what's safe to spend.
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Maker
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Pocket Runway started as a spreadsheet, not a startup idea.
I have more than 10 years of experience in corporate finance, but I still struggled to manage my own money. I overspent, carried credit card debt and regularly got surprised by expenses I should have anticipated.
Monthly budgets never answered the question I actually had: how much can I safely spend before my next paycheck?
I’m paid weekly, so some months contain four paychecks and others contain five. Bills do not divide evenly between them, which made my finances feel chaotic even when the monthly totals worked.
I built a spreadsheet organized around individual pay cycles. Each paycheck covered a block of time, and every bill due during that period was assigned to it. What remained became my spending allowance. As I logged purchases, the spreadsheet showed what was genuinely safe to spend.
That system helped me pay off debt, save for a car, increase my investments and plan for expenses like birthdays and Christmas. I refined it for six years.
Earlier this year, I turned that system into Pocket Runway. I tested the app beside my spreadsheet until it could replace it, then added spending trends, projections and personalized insights.
The goal is simple: show what you can safely spend now without creating a problem before your next paycheck.
The most useful feedback would be whether the pay-cycle approach feels intuitive, whether the safe-to-spend amount provides useful clarity and where the setup becomes confusing. Direct criticism is welcome.
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Maker
Hey Product Hunt — I’m Ross, the solo builder behind Pocket Runway.
I built it because I kept running into a really simple problem with budgeting apps:
My checking account balance wasn’t actually the amount I could spend.
If I had $2,000 in checking, some of that already belonged to bills, transfers, savings, and everything else due before my next paycheck.
I didn’t really want another monthly budget. I wanted to know:
“After everything I need to cover before payday, what can I safely spend today?”
That became Pocket Runway.
It budgets one paycheck at a time, automatically reserves what has to be covered before the next one, and turns what remains into a daily safe-to-spend number.
This has been a solo side project for me, and today is its first Product Hunt launch.
I’d especially love feedback on one thing:
When you see Pocket Runway, does the “safe to spend until payday” idea immediately click?
Replies
Hey Product Hunt — I’m Ross, the solo builder behind Pocket Runway.
I built it because I kept running into a really simple problem with budgeting apps:
My checking account balance wasn’t actually the amount I could spend.
If I had $2,000 in checking, some of that already belonged to bills, transfers, savings, and everything else due before my next paycheck.
I didn’t really want another monthly budget. I wanted to know:
“After everything I need to cover before payday, what can I safely spend today?”
That became Pocket Runway.
It budgets one paycheck at a time, automatically reserves what has to be covered before the next one, and turns what remains into a daily safe-to-spend number.
This has been a solo side project for me, and today is its first Product Hunt launch.
I’d especially love feedback on one thing:
When you see Pocket Runway, does the “safe to spend until payday” idea immediately click?
Appreciate anyone who takes a look.