Creating Your First Budget

This is the full path from an empty app to an active budget you're tracking against. Set aside about fifteen minutes, and have your loan and card statements handy.

Step 1 — Open the Budget Builder

Until you've built a budget, the home screen shows Welcome to BetterBudgets with a Get Started button. Tap it to open the Builder.

At the top you'll name the budget. Below that are four sections, in order:

Income → Housing → Expenses → Debts

Each section shows what it adds up to per month and turns green once it has everything it needs. You don't have to finish in one sitting, but the calculation needs all four before it can run.

Step 2 — Name it

Fill in Budget Name and, optionally, Description (Optional) for some notes. It feels skippable on your first budget. It stops feeling skippable around your fourth, when the Archive is a list of similar-looking plans and "Post-raise, aggressive" is the only thing telling them apart.

See Naming Your Budget.

Step 3 — Income and current savings

Add each income source with its paycheck amount and how often you're paid, then set your Next Pay date. That date anchors the whole plan — every paycheck period in your budget is counted forward from it.

Enter your Current Savings as the balance you're starting with today.

The free plan takes one income source; Thrive takes up to five. Full detail: Income & Current Savings.

Step 4 — Housing

Enter your rent or mortgage and the fixed bills that come with it, each with its amount, how often it repeats, and its dates. See Housing.

Step 5 — Expenses

Add your other recurring costs — groceries, gas, a realistic figure for the things that vary. You don't need to itemize every purchase; the plan works from what you commit to.

Each expense takes an amount, how often it repeats, and its dates, which is what places it on the correct paycheck later. See Expenses.

Step 6 — Debts

For each debt, enter the Balance, the Payment, when it's Due, and the interest Rate. The algorithm sequences debts against each other, so a missing one changes the order.

This is the step where accuracy pays off most. See Debts.

On the free plan, the Builder takes rent plus up to five housing bills, two expenses, and two debts, and bills repeat Monthly. If you have more than that, put your largest ones in first — or see What's Included with Thrive for the unlimited version.

Step 7 — Calculate

Tap Calculate. The button turns solid once nothing is missing — if something is, it's named underneath. The app builds your plans and takes you to the results screen.

A typical result is five plans at increasing intensity, from Minimum Effort through Maximum Effort. Each card shows what you'll have saved and by when; expanding one shows its duration, the date your balances reach zero, how much time it saves against the baseline, and a year-by-year breakdown of balances and savings.

On the free plan, Minimum Effort is unlocked and the rest show their headline numbers behind a lock, with an Unlock all plans button beneath. If your situation produces a single plan — The Only Way or The Plan — it's unlocked. See What's Included with Thrive.

Full detail: Understanding Your Results.

Step 8 — Pick one and start tracking

Choose the plan you can live with, not the fastest one. A Maximum Effort plan you abandon in March is worth less than a Minimum Effort plan you finish.

Once a budget is active, the home screen switches to your first paycheck period and lists the bills due from it. From there your routine is short: open the app when you get paid, work down the bills, tick them off.

Next: How Paycheck Budgeting Works.

Nothing here is permanent. You can edit inputs and rebuild whenever your situation changes, and every budget you've built is kept in the Archive. See Editing & Rebuilding a Budget.