Naming Your Budget

The first section of the Builder is General, and it asks for two things: a name and some notes.

It's the section people skip. It's also the one that decides whether your Archive is useful in six months or a wall of identical entries.

Budget Name

Give the budget a name that describes the situation it was built for, not the date you built it.

Names that work:

• ›Current — post-raise
• ›If we move to Denver
• ›Aggressive payoff, no vacation
• ›Baseline before car purchase

Names that don't:

• ›Budget 1
• ›New Budget
• ›Test

The reason is the Archive. Every budget you build is kept, and you'll accumulate more than you expect — one from before a raise, two exploring a move, one you built to see what happens if you drop a subscription. When you come back to compare them, the name is the only thing distinguishing plans that otherwise look similar.

Notes

The notes field is free text, and it's where the assumptions go. The name tells you which budget this is; the notes tell you what you were thinking when you built it.

Useful things to record:

• ›What you assumed that might change — assumes the bonus lands in March
• ›What you deliberately left out — not counting freelance, too unpredictable
• ›Why you chose the plan you chose — went Aggressive, not Maximum — needed the cushion
• ›What you'd revisit — rebuild once the car loan is gone

Six months later this is the difference between understanding an old budget and guessing at it.

Changing the name later

Both fields are editable. Open the budget from the Archive and edit it like any other input — see Editing & Rebuilding a Budget. Renaming doesn't affect the plan or your tracking.

Next

Continue to Income & Current Savings.