Your daily brief
The morning email: what is in it, what is deliberately left out, and how to start or stop it.
The brief is off until you ask for it. Turn it on under Settings → Notifications, pick the hour you want it, and it arrives each morning in your own timezone. A few lines over coffee is enough to stay current — the brief exists so that staying close to your numbers doesn’t depend on remembering to open an app.
The same Settings page holds everything else this app can email you: account alerts you create yourself (a low balance, a large withdrawal or deposit — each one is yours to add and delete), three messages that start on — a short congratulations when a debt you track reaches zero, a Month in Review on the first morning of the new month, and, once you’ve built your first budget, a heads-up to plan the coming month, sent a few days before it begins — and, if you ask for it, a Weekly Summary each Sunday of where the week’s money went. Each carries a one-click unsubscribe in every copy. On the weekend your Month in Review arrives, that email covers the week and the summary sits one out — one story per morning, never two. Security notices about your sign-in are separate: they are part of your account and cannot be turned off.
What’s in it
Four sections, and any section with nothing to say is left out entirely:
- Needs you. The same alerts your dashboard raises — a category over budget, a paycheck that hasn’t arrived, transactions that might be duplicates — each linking to the place you fix it.
- Coming up, next 7 days. Scheduled payments and expected paydays, with the account each one hits.
- New since your last brief. What your banks brought in, and how many rows still need a category.
- Your banks. When you last synced, and a warning if a connection needs you to sign in again.
At the top, before anything that needs you, there is a verse for the day — the same one on your Home page that morning. On the days that have one, it’s chosen for the occasion: the birth of Christ at Christmas, the resurrection on Easter, thankfulness at Thanksgiving, and the sacrifice of those who served on Memorial Day.
On a quiet day, no email is sent at all. That’s deliberate: a daily “nothing to report” is the fastest way to teach yourself to ignore something. Arriving means there is something worth a minute.
What’s deliberately left out
No account balances, and no account numbers — not in the body, and nothing about money in the subject line or the preview text your phone shows on the lock screen. Email sits unencrypted in a mailbox for years, so the brief names what needs your attention and leaves the numbers that would matter to a stranger inside the app.
Seeing one before you commit
Send me one now, on the same Settings page, mails you the real thing immediately — the actual template with your actual data. Once a day, and unlike the scheduled brief it sends even when there is nothing to report, because its whole job is to show you what arrives.
Stopping it
Every brief carries an unsubscribe link, and your mail app may show its own Unsubscribe button at the top of the message. Either works without signing in, and neither asks you to confirm anything beyond one press. You can also switch it off in Settings, which is also where you turn it back on. The brief is a servant of your attention, not an obligation — if it stops helping, stop it, freely.
This never affects account email. Confirming your address and resetting your password are part of signing in rather than something you subscribed to, so they keep working whatever you do here.
If it doesn’t arrive
Check the other tabs and folders in your mail app first. The brief carries the headers that identify it as subscription mail — the same ones that make the Unsubscribe button appear — and some providers file that under Promotions or Updates rather than your main inbox. Moving one message to where you want it usually teaches your provider to put the rest there too.
If nothing has arrived at all, confirm the address on your profile is one you actually read.
Did this miss the point? Email info@lampandledger.com — knowing which article failed you is the most useful thing you can send.