Organizing & Deleting
Budgets accumulate faster than you'd expect. The Archive has a few tools for keeping the list navigable.
Search
Search all budgets filters the list by name and description as you type — which is the practical reason to write real names and descriptions. A search for Denver finds the budgets you built while considering the move; a list of unnamed budgets finds nothing.
Search looks through the budgets already loaded on the page. If you have a long history and older budgets haven't loaded yet, a Search older budgets button at the bottom pulls them in.
If nothing matches, you'll see No budgets match that search.
See Naming Your Budget.
Sort
The menu beside the search box has two options:
- ›Newest — most recent first, the default
- ›Oldest — earliest first, good for seeing where you started
Either way, budgets are grouped under the month they were generated, so a consistent naming habit still pays off. Naming scenario budgets Scenario — Denver, Scenario — new car makes them easy to find with search.
Pin to top
Pinning keeps a budget in a Pinned group above the months, whatever the sort order. Open the budget, tap ⋮, and choose Pin to top. Choose Unpin from the same menu to remove it. Pinned budgets show a pin icon in the list and a Pinned badge when opened.
Your active budget doesn't need pinning — it's always at the top of the Archive.
Worth pinning:
- ›A baseline you compare everything against
- ›Whatever you're currently deciding between
Pinning everything defeats the purpose. Two or three is about right.
Pinning is a Thrive feature. On the Free plan the menu shows Pin to top ($) and opens the upgrade screen. See What's Included with Thrive.
Delete
Open the budget, tap ⋮, and choose Delete. You'll be asked Delete this budget? with a Delete button to confirm.
The budget disappears from your Archive straight away. It isn't wiped, though — if you delete one by mistake, contact support and they can bring it back. See Help & Feedback.
Think before deleting
Budgets are small and the Archive holds as many as you like. There's very little reason to delete, and a few good reasons not to.
An old budget is a record of what your finances looked like at a point in time — your income, your balances, your rates. That becomes more valuable as it ages, not less. The budget from two years ago showing $31,000 in debt is worth keeping when today's shows $8,000.
Better options than deleting:
- ›Leave it. Month groups and search handle a long list fine.
- ›Rename it to something clearly historical —
Old — pre-2024— so it stops competing for attention. - ›Unpin it if it's cluttering the top.
Reasonable reasons to actually delete: genuine duplicates, a budget created by mistake, or a test you built while learning the app.
Deleting the active budget
Deleting the budget you're tracking removes it from the Archive, but it doesn't take it off Home. Home and Analyze carry on with it, and the Archive no longer shows it at the top or anywhere else — so there's nothing to open if you want to switch away later.
Put a different plan on Home first, then delete. See Your Active Budget.
Keeping it manageable
A few habits that keep the Archive useful rather than overwhelming:
- ›Rebuild only when your circumstances actually change, not after every bad month — see Editing & Rebuilding a Budget
- ›Name scenario budgets with a common prefix so search finds them together
- ›Pin sparingly
- ›Use the description, so an old budget can explain itself