Expenses

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

What each expense takes

›Name — a label you'll recognize on your bill list
›Amount — what you pay
›Frequency — how often it recurs
›Due dates — when it starts and, where relevant, when it ends

Due dates place the bill on a paycheck

This is the part that's easy to breeze past. The due 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 bill 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:

›Utilities — electricity, gas, water, internet, phone
›Insurance — health, auto, renters or homeowners, life
›Subscriptions — streaming, software, gym
›Transportation — fuel, transit passes, parking
›Groceries — a realistic monthly figure
›Childcare and school costs
›Pets — food, insurance, routine vet

What to leave out

Debt payments. Those belong in Debts, where the algorithm can work on them. Entering a credit card minimum 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 or mortgage. That's Housing.

Discretionary spending. Dining out, entertainment, shopping. The plan is built from your committed costs; leave yourself room rather than trying to schedule every coffee. If you want to see where discretionary money goes, that's what the dashboard's category views are for.

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

Annual and irregular bills

Use the frequency setting rather than converting to a monthly figure yourself. An annual insurance premium entered as an annual expense will land 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.

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.