EveryDollar uses five Groups to organize your budget: Income, Giving, Savings, Spending, and Debt. This guide outlines how your budget is set up, and suggests which budget items to include in each of the groups.
While you can customize your budget, your goal should be to set up a budget that does not require constant changes, such as deleting and creating new budget items every month.
Table of Contents
Income
You should use the Income Group to list your individual paychecks, side hustle income, gift money, and the other miscellaneous money that shows up throughout the year.
List out each individual paycheck. We suggest using clear names to help quickly discern what items are waiting to receive income. You can use names such as His Paycheck 1, His Paycheck 2, His Paycheck 3, Her Paycheck 1, Her Paycheck 2, and so on.
With your other income sources, you can either list out each individual source as a budget item (e.g., birthday money, Christmas money, refunds, etc.), or you can use a broad name such as Miscellaneous Income depending on how much detail you want to include in your budget.
Giving
The Giving Group will include any money that you voluntarily choose to donate, tithe, or offer to someone else. Here, you can list out budget items such as Tithe, Church, Generosity, Charity, or any other items you want to add.
Savings
You should list out all the budget items you’re regularly saving for in the Savings Group. This includes the built-in Emergency Fund, alongside your savings for auto maintenance, vacation, insurance premiums, a new roof, property taxes, and so on.
Spending
Your Spending Group will contain Sub-Groups. Each Sub-Group will hold the budget items you choose to add.
Here are a few Sub-Groups and suggestions for which budget items you can consider including in each Sub-Group:
- Housing: Rent/mortgage, electric bill, water bill, natural gas bill, home internet, trash, etc. You may even consider putting household products here (such as cleaning supplies or new lightbulbs).
- Transportation: Gasoline, ride-share, car parts, etc.
- Food: Groceries, restaurants, food delivery, coffee, etc.
- Personal: Haircuts, new clothes, phone bill, subscriptions, etc.
- Lifestyle: Pet care, date night, home décor, etc.
- Health: Medicine, vitamins, doctor’s appointments, fitness classes, etc.
The budget items you choose to list in each Spending Sub-Group are up to you. You can move budget items across Spending Sub-Groups, and add, delete, or rename an item or Sub-Group. Use your discretion and set up these sub-groups so your budget makes sense to you.
Debt
The Debt Group will contain each non-mortgage debt you’re working on paying off. List out the credit cards, auto loans, HELOCs, student loans, IRS back taxes, and so on. You’ll need to include the current balance and minimum monthly payment to start, but you can also include optional figures like the interest rate or original balance.
Next Steps
Now that you’ve set up your budget, check out the free, group coaching call Budgeting 101. EveryDollar coaches lead this call to demo a live budget, explain the features of EveryDollar, and lead a Q&A session so you can ask your EveryDollar or money questions.
Register for Budgeting 101 here: EveryDollar Budgeting 101 Workshop.