Every status, projection, and suggestion you see is computed from a handful of transparent formulas. No black boxes. Here is exactly how it works — and what it deliberately leaves out.
A single net-worth number tells you how much you have — not whether you'll afford the things that matter. Boscelli organizes everything around named, dated goals: an emergency fund, a down payment, retirement, a child's tuition. You link the accounts building toward each one, and we project whether the balance will be there when you need it.
For each goal we read four things:
Balances are entered manually and stamped with a Last Updated date so you always know how fresh a projection is. Nothing is synced from your bank.
We grow each account to the target date with the standard future-value of a lump sum plus level monthly contributions:
FV = PV · (1 + r)n + PMT · [ ((1 + r)n − 1) / r ]
When the expected return is 0% the formula has no growth term, so we fall back to the honest straight-line version, FV = PV + PMT · n, which also avoids dividing by zero. A goal's projected amount is the sum of its accounts' projected balances.
We compare the projected amount to the target and assign one of three statuses — distinct colors so the two failure modes never blur together:
A goal already funded past its target reads Achieved, and a goal with no linked accounts reads No Accounts until you connect one. Status is always recomputedfrom today's date and balances — it is never stored, so it can never drift out of date.
When a goal falls short, we solve for the additional monthly contribution that would close the gap exactly by the target date:
PMT = gap · r / ((1 + r)n − 1)
At a 0% return this is simply gap ÷ n. That is the number behind the “contribute X more per month” suggestion on each goal.
On a goal's detail page you can drag in an extra monthly contribution and watch the projected path move in real time. To stay honest, that extra contribution is grown at 0%— we never assume a return on money you haven't committed yet. The scenario shows your new projected balance and the month the goal would be reached, recomputed in under a fifth of a second.
Goals end. When one reaches its target, the money that was funding it becomes free — so we stop paying into it and offer that money to your remaining goals, in the priority order you set, giving each only as much as it still needs.
Most tools skip this and treat every contribution as running forever. That gets it wrong twice: it keeps paying into a goal you have already met, and never offers that money to the goals still short — so it asks you to find money you will already have. A goal needing $15,000 in three years can look impossible on that arithmetic and be nearly funded once sequencing is counted.
This is an assumption, and worth knowing about. It assumes you actually redirect the money when a goal completes, rather than spending it. If you would not, the projection is optimistic — so every goal shows what it would reach on its own too. We never move money, and we never decide which goal deserves it: the order is yours.
Boscelli is a planning tool, not financial, investment, or tax advice, and it is not a brokerage. Projections are estimates based on the inputs you provide — actual results will differ. To keep the numbers honest and easy to reason about, the current version does not model:
What you put in is what we project from. That is the whole point: a clear, forward-looking view you can fully understand.
Add a goal, link an account, and watch the projection take shape.
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