Income & Current Savings

The Income section sets the size of everything else. It's also where you set the dates the entire plan is built around.

At the top of the section are two fields — Current Savings and Emergency Fund Goal? — and below them your income sources.

Adding an income source

Tap Add income to open a sheet. Each source takes:

›Name — a label for the source, up to 13 characters
›Paycheck — what one check brings in
›Every — how often you're paid. The options depend on your country; in the US they're Weekly, Biweekly, Semimonthly, and Monthly
›Next Pay — the date of your next paycheck
›Last Pay — leave it on No end for a salary, or set the date of the final check if a contract or job ends
›Months off — calendar months with no paychecks, every year (see below)
›No raise / Yearly raise — an optional yearly raise (see below)

Tap Add to save it. A source needs a name and an amount above zero to count as complete.

On Free you can have 1 income source. Thrive allows up to 5, so a job plus regular freelance work can be two entries. See What's Included with Thrive.

Why next pay matters more than it looks

BetterBudgets doesn't organize your budget by calendar month. It organizes it by paycheck, and it counts pay periods forward from the next pay date you enter here.

Next Pay has to fall within one pay period of today: 7 days for weekly, 14 for biweekly, 16 for semimonthly, and 31 for monthly. If you change a source to a shorter frequency, the date is pulled in to fit.

Get this date wrong and every bill in your plan lands on the wrong paycheck. The totals will still be right, but the timing — which is the whole point of paycheck budgeting — won't be. It's worth double-checking against your actual pay calendar.

If you're paid weekly or biweekly, this is also where the app earns its keep: those cycles drift against the calendar, so some months contain an extra paycheck. The plan accounts for that automatically once the date is right.

Months off

If an income stops for the same months every year — a teacher's July and August, say — pick those months under Months off. The plan skips paychecks from that source in those months.

A month that only one of your incomes takes off is covered by the others. If every income is off in the same month, the section shows a warning naming the month and roughly how much the plan needs saved before then. Your emergency fund goal is held at no less than that amount, so the plan sets the money aside before the gap arrives.

Yearly raise

Switch to Yearly raise if a source goes up by a set percent each year. Enter the Raise percent and pick the month it lands under Every. It starts at 3% in the month of your next paycheck, and a line underneath confirms what you've set — for example, 3% more every September, compounding. Later paychecks in the plan include the raise.

Current Savings

Current Savings is your starting balance — the money you have saved right now, today. It is not a target and not a monthly contribution.

The app uses it as the opening position for the savings projection in every plan. If you enter zero when you actually have $3,000 set aside, every plan will show you reaching your milestones later than you really will.

Emergency fund goal

Emergency Fund Goal? is optional and starts on None. You can set a goal in months of bills — 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, or 12 months of bills — or choose An amount and type a figure into Fund Target.

A month of bills means every housing bill and expense plus every debt payment, for one month. When you pick a number of months, a line under the field shows what that comes to right now, for example ≈ $6,900 — 3 months of bills and minimum payments, and it updates as you change your bills.

With a goal set, each plan on the results screen shows the date it reaches the goal, and Home tracks your progress toward it. See Understanding Your Results.

Amounts: what figure to enter

Enter what actually arrives in your account from one check — the take-home amount, not your yearly salary. The projections are built against real available money.

If you're not sure what your take-home will be — you're starting a new job, changing your withholding, or moving somewhere new — use the Paycheck Calculator to estimate it from your gross pay, filing status, and location, then bring that number back here.

Irregular income

If your income varies, enter a conservative average rather than a good month. The plan is a commitment schedule; building it on your best month produces a plan that fails in an ordinary one.

For income you can't predict at all — bonuses, tax refunds, occasional side work — leave it out of this section entirely. Treat it as a windfall when it arrives and put it against a debt or into savings then. A plan that doesn't depend on money you might not get is a plan you can keep.

Tips

›Add every recurring source your plan allows, even small ones. They add up over a multi-year projection.
›Re-check next pay if you change jobs or your employer shifts the pay cycle.
›Rebuild after a raise you didn't plan for — a raise changes which plans are available to you, not just the numbers in them.

Continue to Housing.