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Getting Started

Updated

Welcome to Lume. This guide walks you through the initial setup and your first monthly close: add your accounts, import a statement, categorise, confirm.

1. Download and open Lume

Download Lume from the App Store on your Mac or iPhone and open it. No sign-up or account is required - the app is ready to use immediately. One purchase covers both, so if you use both devices, download it on each with the same Apple ID. See Lume on iPhone for what the iPhone app includes.

An account is only needed if you later want to sync across your devices, which is optional and off by default. See Sync, Recovery, and Deleting Your Account when you get there.

2. Pick your base currency

Every total Lume reports is in one currency. Choose yours in Settings → Appearance → Base currency before you close your first month.

It locks once a month is confirmed, because confirmed months’ totals are stored in that currency and changing it would relabel them without converting anything. Accounts can still be held in other currencies; Lume converts their balances at each close.

3. Check your FIRE targets

The defaults work, but look over Settings → FIRE targets first:

  • Withdrawal rate - typically 3–4%
  • Barista FIRE - what part-time work would bring in a month; your portfolio covers the rest of your spending. Leave it blank and Lume assumes half your spending. Barista FIRE: What It Is and How to Work Out Your Number helps you pick a realistic figure
  • Fat FIRE - a multiple of your spending, for a more generous retirement, with the monthly and yearly spend it works out to
  • Safety net - how many months of spending you want set aside

Lume uses these to calculate your Lean FIRE, Barista FIRE, FIRE and Fat FIRE milestones. Your spending comes from the months you close, so there is no annual-expenses figure to enter. Once you have closed a month, each setting shows the target it produces.

4. Add your accounts

The empty Dashboard is Get started. Open Your accounts and add what you want to track, in three groups:

  • From statements - current accounts, savings and cards, whose balances come from the statements you import
  • From trades - investment accounts, valued from your broker’s trades at each close
  • Typed each month - what no statement gives, such as cash or a car

What you owe goes in here too: Credit card under From statements, because the lender exports one, and Mortgage under Typed each month, because it doesn’t. Either one makes the asset class it needs, and Accounts shows them in a Liabilities ledger under your assets, as what you owe rather than as a minus.

A loan can also work its own balance out. Open it in Accounts and give it a yearly rate, the month it ends and the payment that leaves your account, and Lume offers what’s owed at each close, splits every payment into interest and principal, and shows how much of it is behind you. The interest counts as spending - under Loan interest unless you send it elsewhere - and the principal moves no figure, because it is only net worth changing columns.

5. Import a statement

Download a statement from your bank and choose Import a statement. Lume reads CSV, Excel (.xlsx), OFX and QFX, and from Lume 2.2.1 PDF statements that have text and a table of lines. For CSV, Excel and PDF you map the columns once per bank, and Lume remembers the mapping; OFX and QFX need no mapping. From Lume 2.0 you can also open the file in Lume straight from Finder, Mail or your bank’s app, and it asks which account it belongs to.

The file is read on your device and never uploaded. Lume keeps the lines, encrypted like the rest of your data. Older Excel files (.xls) and scanned PDFs aren’t read: export CSV, Excel or OFX instead, or type that account’s balance each month. When a statement states its opening and closing balances, Lume checks that its lines add up to them, and says when they don’t.

For investment accounts, import your broker’s trades file into the account’s Trade log. At each close Lume fetches month-end prices to value your holdings, and works out your cost basis and annual return from the trades.

6. Close your first month

Press Close September - or whichever month is due - on the Get started card, and follow the four steps:

  1. Statements - each account’s balance from its statement, or Nothing happened for one that didn’t move
  2. Categorise - the month’s lines, grouped by merchant, with Lume’s guesses from your rules
  3. Type - only what no statement gives: a payslip’s gross pay and deductions, cash, a balance you type. A loan with a rate and an end date offers its own, worked out from the month before, for you to accept or type over
  4. Confirm - the month as it will be confirmed, each figure with where it came from, grouped as assets and liabilities

The categories you choose can become rules, so next month’s lines arrive with Lume’s guesses. Months your statement reaches from before you started fold into Before you started in Months, and you can close them one by one.

That’s it. The dashboard now shows your net worth, your savings rate, and how far along you are toward each FIRE milestone. Months lists every month; open one to read it, and edit it from there if something needs correcting.

7. Bring your history (optional)

If you have kept your numbers in a spreadsheet, Bring your history (CSV) on Get started takes them, with a template. It replaces every month, so it is offered before your first import. Those months are marked Typed in Months, and when a statement later covers one, its balance moves to the statement.

8. See when you could get there

Go to Scenarios and press Add scenario. Lume fills it in from your confirmed months and latest balances - you say when you plan to retire, and when you stop saving if that comes first. From Lume 2.2.2 the year you were born is one setting, the first row of FIRE targets in Settings, and every scenario and the dashboard’s milestone ages use it: the first time, Scenarios asks for it before your first scenario.

The scenario gives each milestone a month and an age, and your main scenario supplies the dates on the dashboard. A loan is followed to its end: while it runs, its payment leaves each month; when it clears, what you were saving goes up by the payment and your spending - and every target made of it - comes down by the interest it was carrying. Every close you confirm updates your scenarios with the new numbers, keeping anything you changed by hand.

From Lume 3.0 a scenario can hold more. Events are what you expect to happen: one amount, an amount that repeats, or a change for a while - a pension from 67, a new car every eight years, a year without a salary. Retiring at an age gives Coast FIRE a date: the first month you could stop saving and still reach FIRE by then. Show a range of outcomes runs the scenario 1,000 times with returns that go up and down, and draws the bands they make. A pension can be locked until the age it opens, with a tax on gains as money comes out, and Compare with… sets two scenarios side by side.

9. Each month

The key to useful data is consistency. From Lume 3.1, Remind me to close the month in Settings under Monthly close sends a notification on the day and time you pick to download your statements and close the month, on each device you turn it on, and it names the month, never a figure. Lume also shows which month is due and what it still needs - Close September in the sidebar on Mac, and at the top of the Dashboard and Months on iPhone. Over time, you’ll build a clear picture of your financial trajectory.

Questions? Reach out at henriquejcpacheco@gmail.com.