Editing & Rebuilding a Budget
A budget is a projection from a snapshot of your finances. When the snapshot stops matching reality, rebuild it.
Small changes: edit the paycheck on Home
Not every change needs a rebuild. On Home, you can change a bill amount, a debt payment or balance, or a paycheck amount; add an expense; or log spending under a bill line. These edits apply to that one paycheck only — the rest of the plan stays as it was.
See Completing Bills.
When to rebuild
Rebuild when the inputs change for good:
- ›Your income changes — raise, new job, hours change, a side income starts or stops
- ›You move, or your rent or mortgage changes
- ›You take on a new debt
- ›A debt is paid off entirely
- ›A major recurring expense appears or disappears
Don't rebuild for:
- ›A single month where you overspent
- ›A one-off expense
- ›Falling behind for a few weeks
Those aren't input changes, they're normal variance. Rebuilding every time a month goes sideways gives you a stack of near-identical budgets and no continuity in your tracking. Let the plan absorb the noise, and use one-paycheck edits on Home for the odd bill that comes in different.
How to rebuild
Open the budget in the Archive and tap Edit in Builder. Its income, housing, expenses, debts, current savings, and emergency fund goal load back into the Builder, with each date moved forward to its next occurrence so the new plan doesn't start in the past. The name and description aren't loaded, so enter them again.
Change whichever sections need it, then tap Calculate.
The app builds a full set of plans from the revised inputs. This isn't a patch of your existing plan; it's a fresh calculation saved as a new budget, so the available plans may differ from what you saw before. A raise can open up plans that weren't offered previously.
You'll choose a plan again from the new results. See Understanding Your Results.
What happens to your tracking
The budget you were tracking isn't changed or erased. It stays in the Archive with the bills you ticked and any edits you made to it.
When you start a plan from the new results, Home begins tracking that plan's paychecks. Changing your Next Pay date in particular re-anchors the whole schedule, since every pay period is counted forward from that date.
Rebuilding vs. building new
Every calculation saves a new budget, so the difference is in how you use them.
Rebuild from the Archive when your real circumstances have changed and the old plan is simply out of date. Start the new plan and carry on from there.
Build a separate budget when you want to compare — you're exploring a move, pricing a car, or wondering what would happen if you dropped a few subscriptions. You can look at the results without tapping Start, so the plan you're living on stays on Home.
Name and describe exploratory budgets clearly. If we move to Denver with a description explaining the assumptions is worth far more later than a fourth entry called New Budget. See Naming Your Budget.
On Free, the Archive lists your three most recent budgets, and switching to a plan from the Archive requires Thrive. See What's Included with Thrive.
Going back to an older budget
Past budgets aren't gone. On Thrive, open any budget in the Archive, select one of its plans, and tap Use [plan name] to put it back on Home — useful when you built something exploratory, switched to it, and want to go back. Home tracks that plan's paychecks from today.
See Your Active Budget.
Modeling a purchase before committing
If the change you're considering is a purchase rather than something that's already happened, price it first. The calculators exist for this, and several can push their result straight into the Builder with Add To Budget — so you can see the real effect on your timeline before you sign anything.
See Calculators Overview.