​

Goals

Goals let you earmark money in your accounts toward specific targets — a vacation fund, a new car, or an emergency reserve. Sure reads the live balance of the linked accounts to show you progress, projected completion, and how much you need to save each month.

​

Goal types

Every goal is one of two kinds: One-off goals are saved toward once and then closed. You set a target amount, an optional deadline, and Sure tracks how close you are. When the target is reached you can mark it complete. A vacation fund, a car down-payment, or a home repair budget are all one-off goals. Maintained goals are target balances to hold, not milestones to cross. An emergency fund is a maintained goal: reaching the target is good, but the goal keeps running so you know when the balance drops below the target balance. Maintained goals cannot be completed — they can only be paused or archived.

​

Progress basis

For goals backed by depository accounts (checking, savings), Sure uses the account balance to measure progress. For goals backed by investment accounts, Sure defaults to the contributions basis: the net amount deposited into the account, excluding market gains. This prevents a market decline from making a goal look behind even when you have kept up with savings.

​

Creating a goal

1. Open Goals from the main navigation.
2. Click New goal.
3. Choose a kind (One-off or Maintained).
4. Enter a name, target amount, currency, and optional deadline (one-off only).
5. Pick one or more accounts to link. Accounts must be depository or investment type.
6. Optionally add a color, icon, and notes.
7. Save.

​

Emergency fund targets

When creating a maintained goal you can set the target balance as a fixed amount or as N months of expenses. With the months-of-expenses mode, Sure derives the target balance from your family’s median monthly spend at the moment you save the goal, then recalculates it automatically on the first of each month so the target balance stays meaningful as your spending changes. In months mode the target balance field is replaced by a derived display. If your family has no spending history yet, the form shows “Worked out when you save” and keeps the field editable so you can enter an initial amount manually. Once a history exists, the form shows the calculated figure instead of a text input.

​

Tracking progress

Each goal card shows:

• Progress amount — the total counting money still held in the linked accounts plus any amount already spent on the goal. This is the same figure the progress ring is drawn from, so the ring and the number always agree.
• Progress percentage
• Monthly saving rate needed to reach a deadline (one-off goals with a target date)
• Current pace (rolling 90-day average net inflow into the linked accounts, divided by three months)
• Status pill

When you have recorded spending from a goal, a secondary line reads “Including X already used” beneath the progress amount. This tells you how much of the total has been consumed, so you do not need to subtract it yourself. Goals backed by a reserve (maintained goals) never show this line because reserves do not support spending.

​

Status values

Paused goals show a Paused badge instead of a status, because the pace clock is intentionally stopped.

​

Pledges

A pledge is a recorded intent to add money toward a goal. Use it when you want to track a specific deposit you plan to make. To add a pledge:

1. Open the goal’s page.
2. Click I’m saving toward this.
3. Choose an account, enter the amount, and confirm.

Sure watches incoming transactions and account-balance updates for the pledge window. When a matching deposit arrives — within $0.50 or 1% of the pledge amount and within the pledge window — Sure marks the pledge as matched and links it to the transaction. Pledges expire after seven days if no matching transaction arrives. You can extend a pledge’s window or renew it.

​

Recording spending from a goal

When you use money saved toward a goal — for example, you pay for the trip your vacation fund covered — record the spend so the goal’s progress stays accurate.

1. Open the goal’s page.
2. Click I used some of this money. When the goal has been reached, this button appears directly on the goal card alongside the close action. You can also find it in the overflow menu at any time while the goal is active.
3. Enter the amount spent and the account it came from.

Sure records the spend and adjusts the goal’s earmark on the linked account so the money is freed up for other goals or regular spending.

• For goals with a fixed earmark (a specific amount allocated to the goal), the earmark is reduced by the amount spent.
• For goals linked to a whole account (no fixed amount set), the whole-account link is converted to a fixed earmark equal to what the goal still needs to reach its target, capped by what the account currently backs. This prevents the consumed amount from being counted twice when the account balance catches up after the transaction syncs.

If the amount you enter exceeds what the account currently backs for this goal, the spend is refused.

​

Goal states

A goal moves through the following states: You can reverse some state transitions. Open the goal’s detail page and use the menu to:

• Reopen a completed goal — moves it back to active and reinstates its earmark.
• Unarchive an archived goal — moves it back to active and reinstates its earmark.

Deleting a goal removes it and its pledges entirely. It does not affect your account balances or transactions.

​

Linked accounts and earmarks

A goal earmarks the balance of its linked accounts. You can link an account to a goal in two ways:

• Whole account — the goal claims the entire account balance. Leave the amount field blank to use this mode. Only one active goal at a time can hold a whole-account link on any given account. Trying to add a second whole-account link to the same account is refused.
• Fixed earmark — you allocate a specific amount of the account balance to the goal. Multiple goals can each hold a fixed earmark on the same account, provided the total does not exceed the balance.

When you leave the amount field blank, the hint beneath the account row tells you what the goal will claim:

• If no other goal has earmarked any portion of that account, the hint reads “This goal will use this account’s whole balance.”
• If other goals already hold earmarks on the same account, the hint reads “This account will fund whatever is left after the other earmarks.”

When another goal already holds a whole-account link on an account, that account shows as unavailable. You must enter a specific amount to add it to a second goal. To split a balance between goals, allocate a specific portion to each goal using the earmark controls in the goal form.

​

Background jobs

• SweepExpiredGoalPledgesJob — runs every 15 minutes and marks pledges that have passed their window as expired.
• RefreshMaintainedGoalTargetsJob — runs at 3:00 AM on the first of each month and recalculates the target amount for any maintained goal using the months-of-expenses mode.