A position at sea is never a single number.
When a sailor takes a fix — their exact position on the chart at a given instant — one figure isn't enough. They need two coordinates: latitude and longitude. One alone pinpoints nothing. Together, they pinpoint one precise spot, and only that one.
In personal finance it's the same, with one difference: the coordinates aren't two, they're four.
Taken one at a time, each tells a piece. Taken together, they tell you where you really are.
And the interesting thing is that reading them doesn't take hours. It takes a minute.
This article is the overview. The four coordinates seen as one system, not as four disconnected numbers on a dashboard. For each one, where you want to go deeper, there's a dedicated article that takes it and opens it up in full.
Why four, and not one
There's a temptation to reduce financial health to a single number.
Usually that number is the account balance. "I have this much in the bank, so I'm fine." Or the salary. "I earn this much a month, so I'm all set."
The problem is that every single number, on its own, lies by omission.
The account balance tells you how much cash you have right now, but not whether that "this much" holds for three months without income, nor whether in the meantime you're piling up debt somewhere else. Your salary tells you how much comes in, but not how much is left.
You need four angles because financial health has four dimensions that don't overlap:
where you are (the position), which direction you're heading (the trajectory), how sheltered you are (the margin), and how well you know yourself (the clarity).
A single number covers one. Four cover them all.
Let's go through them in the order I read them, once a week.
Coordinate 1 — Net worth: where you are
The first coordinate is net worth: everything you own, minus everything you owe.
It isn't the account balance. It isn't the salary. It isn't how much you spent or saved last month.
It's a subtraction: positive assets (accounts, investments, property at market value, durable goods at their residual value) minus liabilities (remaining mortgage, loans, instalments still to pay).
In Cashfulness you don't calculate this number by hand. It updates on its own after every movement you record, because underneath there's double-entry bookkeeping: every transaction has two sides that balance, and the net result is reflected immediately in your wealth. On the home screen you find it as a single figure — "a snapshot of your wealth: accounts, assets, debts."
This is the base coordinate. The where you are.
All three others, in one way or another, comment on it: one tells you which direction you're moving it, one how sheltered you are while you move it, one how well you really know it.
If you want only this one, and to understand why it's the most underrated number in personal finance, there's an article about it alone.
Coordinate 2 — The mix between what produces and what costs: which direction you're heading
Net worth tells you where you are. But two people can be at the same spot and head in opposite directions.
The second coordinate is the ratio between Asset+ and Asset−: the mix between the goods that produce a flow for you and those that demand one from you.
Asset+ are what you own that, while you own it, brings something back to you: a property you rent out, shares that pay dividends, a fund that grows, bonds, a stake in a business. You do almost nothing, and something comes back your way.
Asset− are what you own that asks money of you while you hold it: the car, the house you live in, the second home you use yourself. They have value — but in the meantime, you work for them.
Let's take an example.
Luca and Giulia have the same net worth: 150,000 euros.
Luca holds 70% of it in Asset+: part of his wealth is rowing for him, he's building. Giulia holds the opposite, 80% in Asset−: same spot on the chart, but she's slowly dissipating, even if she doesn't feel it in the moment.
Same position, opposite trajectories. That's what the second coordinate captures and the first, on its own, doesn't see.
In Cashfulness you classify each asset as Asset+ or Asset− when you create it. The home screen then presents the distinction — "Asset+ and Asset−: the distinction that changes everything" — and a dashlet with some indices tied to independence, which also shows the trend over time.
It's the coordinate of long-term direction. It has its own dedicated article, because it's the strategic frame of everything: Asset+ and Asset−.
Coordinate 3 — Months of coverage: how sheltered you are
The first two coordinates look at wealth. The third changes the question.
It doesn't ask how much you're worth or which direction you're heading. It asks: if your income stopped tomorrow, for how many months could you pay for your life with the cash you have liquid today?
It's months of coverage, and it's calculated like this:
Cash on hand today ÷ monthly fixed expenses = months of autonomy.
Liquid means one precise thing: money you can use within 24 hours without selling anything else. The account, an instant-access deposit, cash. Not the equity ETF, not the property, not the car: those have value, but in an emergency you risk selling them at the wrong moment, at a loss.
Let's take an example. Marco has 12,000 euros liquid in his account and fixed expenses — rent, bills, minimum groceries, insurance — of 2,000 euros a month. His coverage is 12,000 ÷ 2,000 = six months: the time he can cross without a single euro of new income, without selling anything, sleeping soundly.
It's the coordinate that, more than the others, measures something concrete: the margin. The reaction time in the face of the unexpected.
And here our line is different from the one you usually hear: three months as a baseline for those with stable income, six for those with volatile income, and beyond six — almost always — is too much, because that idle money has a cost. In Cashfulness months of coverage is calculated automatically inside your fix.
The whole reasoning — what counts as liquid, why three months exactly, what to do if you're below — is in an article just for it.
Coordinate 4 — The perceived/real gap: how well you know yourself
The first three coordinates the app measures for you. The fourth it doesn't — and it couldn't: it concerns you, not your money.
It's the gap between perceived wealth and real wealth: the distance between how much you think you have and how much you really have.
It works like a mirror. Before putting the numbers in order, try to tell yourself from memory what you think you own: how much in the bank, how much invested, how much debt, what net worth. Then look at the real figure.
The difference is almost always surprising. Some discover they have less than they believed — because they were counting twice the house they're still paying off with a mortgage, or forgetting a liability. And some discover, with a certain relief, that they're doing better than they feared.
That distance has a practical name: it's the fog. And it's the real engine of financial anxiety, far more than the number itself.
Because a small but clear figure leaves you calm. A large but hazy figure stirs you up.
This coordinate, unlike the other three, the app doesn't calculate for you: it can't know what's in your head. You give it to yourself, and it's simple. The first time it happens almost on its own, with the reckoning: you see your real net worth next to the one you imagined, and the gap leaps out at you. From there on it's a check you do whenever you want — try to tell yourself the number before opening the app, then look at it: the closer they are, the more calibrated you are.
The four together: a system, not four boxes
Now the real point, the one I wrote this article for.
These four coordinates aren't four independent boxes. They're a system. They talk to each other.
Net worth tells you where you are.
The Asset+/Asset− mix tells you which direction you're moving in.
Months of coverage tells you how sheltered you are while you move.
The perceived/real gap tells you how much of all this you actually know, and how much instead you're imagining.
Take away any one of the four, and the position becomes ambiguous again.
You can have a fine net worth but all in Asset−: wealth that looks solid and meanwhile drains you. You can have a perfect trajectory and zero coverage: the first surprise forces you to sell off precisely the things that were working for you. You can have all three numbers in order but not know it: and then you live with the anxiety of someone who's doing well without realizing it.
That's why they should be read together. Each one corrects the illusion that the others, on their own, might give you.
An example that holds all four.
Anna looks at her fix. Net worth: 180,000 euros, a good position. Mix: 35% Asset+, 65% Asset−, she's dissipating more than building. Coverage: ten months, ample, perhaps too liquid. Gap: almost zero, her real numbers match the ones she had in her head.
Four numbers, one single reading: Anna is doing well today and knows herself well, but she has too much sitting idle and a trajectory that doesn't build.
None of the four, on its own, would have told her this. Together, they told her in a minute.
And note what didn't happen: no one told Anna what to do. The coordinates don't decide. They don't tell her to move her liquidity, or where. They give her the position — the choice stays hers, and she makes it with the facts in front of her instead of by feel.
Sixty seconds, once a week
The beauty of a four-coordinate system is that, once it exists, reading it is lightning fast.
Once a week — the day matters less than the consistency — you open Cashfulness and run through the four in order.
Where am I? Which direction am I heading? How sheltered am I? And do I really know it, or am I telling myself a story?
Four questions, four numbers already prepared. Sixty seconds.
Almost always the overall answer is the same: the course holds, I don't need to do anything.
Every now and then one of the four moves unexpectedly — coverage below your threshold, the mix slipped toward Asset−, a gap that wasn't there before. And there you make a small correction, not a drama.
It's the difference between having a background anxiety and having a background figure. The first stays with you all week and never tells you anything precise. The second you look at for a minute, and the rest of the time you can leave it in peace.
Four coordinates aren't more work than one. They're the same reading, done once, that simply stops lying to you by omission.
Money is a tool for buying time and freedom. A system of coordinates you read in a minute gives you back the scarcest thing of all: the quiet of knowing where you are, without having to think about it the rest of the week.
— Vittorio