Your six reserve floors are the dollar amounts each tier needs to be considered "full." Allocation walks them in priority order, fills each one to its floor, and only then moves on. If your floors are too low, you'll feel false security — Survival looks green even though it can't actually carry you through a slow month. If they're too high, you'll never see surplus, and Wealth Building won't compound.
Tuning floors is the single highest-leverage maintenance task in ReservWise. It's also the easiest one to put off. This article gives you a schedule and a set of triggers so you don't have to remember.
A simple review schedule
Two reviews handle 90% of the maintenance:
- Quarterly — open Settings → Reserves, scan all six floors, ask if any feel wrong. 10 minutes.
- Annually — at year-end (or fiscal year-end if you've set one), do a deeper pass: pull last year's average monthly burn, compare to floors, and reset.
Anything more frequent is over-tuning. Reserves are designed to absorb noise, not to be re-tuned in response to it.
Triggers that should bump a review forward
Don't wait for the quarterly review if any of these happen:
- Your monthly Survival burn rose by more than 10% (rent increase, new dependent, new fixed cost).
- You hired a contractor or subscribed to a recurring tool that bumps Business Ops.
- Your tax picture changed materially — entity switch, big jurisdiction move, side business income.
- You took a large draw from a reserve and want it refilled to a different level than before.
- The AI Coach flags a target as out-of-line for three months in a row.
Raising a floor
Raising a floor is the most common adjustment. The math is direct: figure out the new burn or buffer level you want, and set the floor to that.
- Open Settings → Reserves and click the reserve you want to adjust.
- Edit the Floor field. The preview pane shows your current balance against the new floor.
- Click Save target. Your next allocation event uses the new floor.
If the new floor is above your current balance, the reserve is now under-funded. ReservWise will route incoming allocation to it (in priority order) until it's back at floor. You don't need to manually transfer.
Lowering a floor
Lowering is rarer and worth a beat of caution. Common legitimate reasons:
- You paid off a fixed debt and Survival's monthly need genuinely dropped.
- You moved somewhere cheaper, sold a vehicle, or closed an office.
- You set the original floor too aggressively and the reserve has been over-funded for months.
When you lower a floor, the dollars above the new floor become surplus. They don't move automatically — they sit in the reserve. On the next allocation event, ReservWise will route incoming income past this reserve (since it's already above floor) and surplus rules will eventually pull dollars elsewhere if you've configured them. If you want the freed dollars moved now, do a manual transfer. See Drawing from a reserve safely.
How the AI Coach helps
The AI Coach watches three signals and surfaces a suggestion when any of them runs hot:
- Floor utilization. If a reserve has stayed within 5% of floor for 90 days, your floor probably matches reality. No action needed.
- Persistent under-funding. If a reserve has been below floor for 60+ days despite normal income, your floor is likely set higher than your income can support — the Coach will suggest a lower number, with the math behind it.
- Persistent over-funding. If a reserve has been more than 30% above floor for 90+ days, you're either over-floored or you need surplus rules. The Coach shows both options.
Coach suggestions appear as cards on the Dashboard. You can accept, dismiss, or open the math behind any suggestion before deciding. ReservWise never changes a floor for you.
Common mistakes
- Tuning Survival to your highest-cost month. Survival should cover your average month. The other reserves and surplus rules handle the spike months. A Survival floor sized for the worst case eats Growth.
- Tuning Tax in response to a single big quarter. Use the rolling rate, not one quarter's payment.
- Raising every floor at once. Pick one. The next allocation event will rebalance the others naturally.
- Forgetting surplus rules when you lower a floor. Freed dollars need a destination. Don't leave them stranded.
What to do next
- Put a quarterly recurring 10-minute calendar block on your calendar to open Settings → Reserves and skim.
- Re-read How the six-tier priority system works if you're tempted to tune more than one floor at a time.
- If the AI Coach has flagged a target, open the suggestion card and accept, dismiss, or schedule it for your next review.
Floors aren't promises. They're working hypotheses. Update the hypothesis when the data tells you to.