How it works

Built on your worst week, not your best

When your income changes every week, an average is a lie that feels like a fact. Here is exactly how Shugo works out what's safe to spend — and what it refuses to guess.

The short version

Connect your bank and Shugo takes the lowest of your last 8 completed weeks of income — never the average — sets aside the bills due in the next two weeks, keeps a small cushion back, and calls what's left safe to spend. One good week can't inflate the number, because your rent doesn't care about your best week.

The floor, not the average

Shugo looks at your last eight completed weeks of income and takes the lowest one. Not the mean, not the median — the worst. Averages are built for salaries. If you drive, deliver, or pick up shifts, the average quietly assumes a good week is coming, and the week it doesn't is the week you needed the number to be right.

An example — eight weeks of gig income:

What an average would say$596The mean of all eight weeks — a number that has never once been true.

What Shugo uses$389The worst of the eight — the week you actually have to survive.

Illustration only, with made-up weeks. Your floor comes from your own deposits.

What comes off the top

The floor is what's coming in. Three things are subtracted before anything counts as spendable:

Bills due in the next 14 days. Every due date in that window is set aside first, from the bills you've already told Shugo about.
A $50 cushion. Held back and never counted as safe, so the number doesn't walk you to exactly zero.
Money you've already borrowed against. A cash advance taken against future earnings is treated as owed, not earned — it doesn't get counted twice.

Before you have the history

The floor needs at least two completed weeks to mean anything. Below that, Shugo doesn't estimate — it assumes no income at all and shows you a number based only on the cash actually sitting in your account. It's deliberately pessimistic in your first fortnight, and it tells you that's what it's doing rather than inventing a week you haven't worked.

Weeks before you connected your bank are never counted as zero-income weeks. A short history makes the floor cautious; it doesn't make it wrong.

What this number is not

Not advice. Shugo isn't a financial adviser and this isn't a recommendation about what to do with your money.
Not prevention. Shugo can warn you that a balance is headed low. It cannot block a payment, stop a fee, or prevent an overdraft — it never holds or moves a cent of yours.
Not a guarantee. It's a projection built from your own history. A week worse than your worst recent week will still be worse than the floor.

We never see it

The whole calculation runs on your device, on data that's only readable there. We don't compute your floor, receive it, or store it — there is no copy of this number on our side to leak, sell, or hand over. How the lock works →

Turning it on

This part needs a bank connection, which is optional — Shugo tracks bills and due dates without one. Connecting is what adds the spending side: the floor, the early warning, and automatic detection of bills you forgot you had. It's included in the one plan.