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The Archive

Every budget you've ever built is kept in the Archive. Nothing is discarded when you build a new one.

Find it at Settings → Account → Archive.

What's in it

At the top, a card marked ACTIVE BUDGET and On Home shows the budget you're tracking now: its name, when it was generated, the Plan you're on, when you'll be Debt free, and the plan's Length.

Below that, your other budgets, newest first:

  • ›Pinned — budgets you've pinned, above everything else
  • ›By month — the rest, grouped under the month they were generated, with a count for each

Each row shows the budget's name, the date and time it was generated, its description if it has one, and a one-line summary like $4,800/mo · 2 debts.

Budgets without a name show as Unnamed budget — which is a strong argument for naming them. See Naming Your Budget.

If you haven't built one yet, you'll see No budgets yet and an Open Budget Builder button.

Inside a budget

Tap any budget to open it.

Plans — every plan the budget produced, from the gentlest payoff to the fastest. Each shows its length, when you'd be debt free, when your emergency fund would be reached (if you set one), and what you'd have saved by the time the debt is gone. The plan you're using is tagged In use, and the one the builder suggested is tagged Recommended, with a note above the list: People in a similar situation chose…

Notes — everything the builder had to say about the budget, plus the details for whichever plan is selected.

What went in — the inputs it was built from. Tap a tile to see the list:

  • ›Income — per month, with each source's frequency, next payday and amount
  • ›Housing — per month, with each item's frequency and amount
  • ›Expenses — per month, with each item's frequency and amount
  • ›Savings at start — the savings you started with
  • ›Debts — total owed, monthly payments, and each debt's interest rate, payment and balance

This is the record of what you believed when you built it. It's the fastest way to answer "why does this old budget say something different?" — usually because your income was lower or a debt has since cleared.

It's also where you check a suspicious plan. If a projection looks wrong, the interest rates here are the first thing to look at.

What it's for

Comparing plans. Build one budget for your current situation and another for a scenario you're considering, then compare the inputs and outcomes side by side rather than from memory.

Seeing how far you've come. An old budget's debt balances against today's is a more concrete measure of progress than any chart. Especially useful in the middle of a long payoff, when the day-to-day doesn't feel like it's moving.

Recovering a plan. If you switched to something more aggressive and it isn't working, the previous budget is still there to switch back to.

Remembering your reasoning. Notes and inputs together reconstruct not just what you planned but why.

Actions available

At the bottom of an open budget:

From the ⋮ menu in the top corner:

  • ›Pin to top / Unpin
  • ›Delete

And on the Archive list itself, Search all budgets and a sort menu.

See Organizing & Deleting.

The Archive on the Free plan

On the Free plan, your 3 newest budgets stay open. Older ones are still saved, but sit behind a locked card that says how many there are and invites you to upgrade.

Pinning budgets and switching plans are Thrive features too. On Free, the button at the bottom of a budget reads Upgrade to switch plans, and Edit in Builder still works.

See What's Included with Thrive.

Getting value out of it

The Archive is only as useful as what you put in. Two habits make the difference:

Name budgets by situation, not by date. Before the raise beats Budget 3.

Write the assumptions in the description. What you expected to change, what you left out, why you picked the plan you picked. Six months later that's the difference between understanding an old budget and guessing.