The Budget screen lets you set expected income and spending targets by category, then compares your actual spend against those targets for the period you choose.
What this screen shows
The Budget screen has three parts: a method and display-period setting, an income sources section, and a categories section. Your budget method is one of envelope, zero-based, or percentage — percentage mode changes category targets from a dollar amount to a percentage of income. The display period (weekly, biweekly, monthly, or yearly) controls the cadence category targets and actuals are shown in.
Each category you add shows a target-vs-actual comparison as two stacked bars, and can optionally be marked as counting toward housing, which feeds the housing-guideline benchmark below. If any benchmark guidelines are available, a card at the bottom compares your actual spend as a percentage of take-home pay against common named guidelines (like a housing-ratio rule), citing where each guideline comes from.
How to use it
- Choose a method and period at the top of the screen.
- Add an income source — either Simple mode (enter your net pay directly) or Detailed mode (enter gross wage, hours per week, tax rate, retirement rate, and insurance, expressed as fractions, so NetWorthy can work out net pay). Each source has its own pay cadence.
- Add a category — a name, a target amount (or percent, in percentage mode), a cadence, and a bucket (needs, wants, or savings). Mark it as housing if it should count toward the housing guideline.
- Edit or delete any income source or category with the buttons on its row.
- Read the benchmark card — this shows how your actual spend compares to a named guideline; it's a reference point, not a verdict on your budget.
Notes and limits
Benchmark guidelines are informational comparisons against your own numbers, not personalized recommendations — nothing on this screen tells you your budget is right or wrong. Income and category currency is fixed to USD today. A category's "actual" figure is drawn from your recorded transactions in that category for the selected period, so accurate category tagging on the way in is what makes this screen useful.
Switching budget methods changes how a category target is entered — a dollar amount for envelope or zero-based, a percentage of income for percentage mode — but it doesn't convert your existing targets from one form to the other automatically, so revisit each category after changing methods. The buckets (needs, wants, savings) and the housing flag exist to power the benchmark comparisons; they don't otherwise change how a category behaves elsewhere in NetWorthy.