Expenses

The Expenses section holds every cost you pay on a schedule that isn't housing and isn't a debt. Together with housing and debt payments, it determines how much surplus each paycheck has — which is the number every plan is built from.

What each expense takes

Tap Add expense to open a sheet:

›Name — a label you'll recognize on your bill list, up to 13 characters
›Amount — what you pay each time
›Every — how often it recurs
›From — when it starts
›To — leave it on No end, or set the date it stops

Tap Add to save it. To change an expense, tap it; to remove one, swipe it left and tap the trash.

Frequencies

On Free, every expense is Monthly. Thrive adds Weekly, Biweekly, Quarterly, Yearly, and One Time. (In Australia and New Zealand the two-week option is called Fortnightly.)

Enter amounts as they occur, not per month. The section total shows a monthly figure: weekly amounts count four times, biweekly twice, quarterly a third, and yearly a twelfth. A One Time expense isn't part of the monthly total — the plan pays it on its date.

Plan limits

On Free the section holds 2 expenses; the add row shows how many you've used. Thrive removes the limit. If you're on Free, lumping related costs into one line — Groceries & gas — makes the most of it. See What's Included with Thrive.

Due dates place the bill on a paycheck

This is the part that's easy to breeze past. The From date isn't decoration — it's how BetterBudgets decides which paycheck a bill comes out of.

Enter a car insurance payment due on the 20th and it lands on whichever check covers the 20th. Get the date wrong and the bill shows up on the wrong paycheck on your home screen, making one period look tight and another look loose when neither is.

If a cost doesn't have a meaningful date — a rough grocery figure, say — an approximate one is fine. For real dated bills, use the real date.

What to include

Costs that arrive on a schedule:

›Groceries — a realistic figure
›Transportation — fuel, transit passes, parking
›Phone
›Insurance — health, auto, life
›Subscriptions — streaming, software, gym
›Childcare and school costs
›Pets — food, insurance, routine vet
›Spending money — one line for dining out and fun, if you want it in the plan

Lump the small stuff. "Streaming" as one line is easier to track than five services, and the total is what matters.

What to leave out

Debt payments. Those belong in Debts, where the algorithm can work on them. Entering a credit card payment as an expense hides it from the payoff engine — the plan will assume the balance never moves, and you'll get a worse result than you should.

Rent, mortgage, and home bills. Utilities, internet, and home insurance go in Housing.

Anything already escrowed into your mortgage payment. Otherwise you're counting it twice.

Annual and irregular bills

On Thrive, use the frequency setting rather than converting to a monthly figure yourself. An annual insurance premium entered as Yearly lands on the paycheck it's actually due from, which is what you want — that's the month it will hurt. Divided into twelve equal pieces, it disappears from view until it arrives.

On Free, the choice is between entering a monthly share of it or leaving it out and covering it from savings when it's due.

Be honest about the numbers

There's a temptation to trim expenses so the projected payoff date looks better. It works, and it's worthless — the plan will simply be one you can't follow, and you'll spend every pay period over budget wondering why.

If you don't know what you spend on something variable, estimate high rather than low. A plan with a little slack survives contact with an ordinary month.

Continue to Debts.