Categories & budgets
Organize spending, set budgets, and let history do the proposing.
Try it step by step
These steps describe the web app. iPhone controls may differ.
- Open Categories and select the month you want to plan.
- Set each category’s monthly amount and its shared or personal scope.
- Open the proposed budget when available. Review the explanation, edit a suggested value if needed, and accept the selected lines.
- Check rollover settings separately from base amounts. In the next month, review the carried amounts before changing the plan.
Worked example
With a $400 base grocery budget and $50 unused, a surplus-carrying rollover policy can add $50 of headroom next month. The base budget and the rollover are separate values.
Check before you continue
User-entered amounts carry forward and are preserved. Suggestions are offered for review; changing months should not replace your plan with zero.
Category groups
Categories live in groups (Housing, Food, and so on) with spending, budget, and pace visible per row. Add, edit, archive, and recolor to match how your household actually thinks.
Budgets
Set a monthly budget per category — a shared household number, a personal one, or both. Pace bars warn at 75% and turn red when a line is crossed.
The drafted budget
With a month of history, review a proposed budget derived from your real spending. Accept, tweak, or skip each line; later, if your spending shifts, accepted lines get suggested adjustments — numbers you set by hand are never touched.
Starting the next month
Your budgets carry into each new month automatically, including shared and personal amounts. Amounts you set by hand are preserved. Adjustments to suggested budgets are offered for review, not silently applied. Category rollover rules separately determine how surplus or overspending affects the new month.
Committed vs. discretionary
Rows show how much of a category is already committed to recurring bills — the floor beneath the discretionary spending you can actually steer.
A month that's over budget only because a planned annual bill landed shows “annual bill · on plan” instead of red — provided you're reserving for it.