Thrift

Budgets & rollover

Set one budget per category, let unspent money carry into next month, and read over-or-under straight off the figure — no badges, no nagging.

A budget in Thrift is a monthly cap on a category. You set it once, and from then on the number tells you what’s left, not just what’s gone. The defining choice is rollover: what you don’t spend can carry forward instead of evaporating on the 1st — so a lean month funds a louder one, and restraint is rewarded rather than reset.

Setting a budget

Open Budget and give a category a monthly amount. A few things worth knowing:

  • Budgets are monthly. There’s no weekly or custom period to manage.
  • Set caps only on the categories you want to watch; the rest simply track.
  • Recurring bills post automatically into their category, so the spent figure reflects reality without you re-entering the predictable things.

How rollover works

With rollover on, a category’s usable budget each month is:

effective budget = this month's amount + carried-over balance

If you budget $300 for groceries and spend $260, the extra $40 rolls into next month, giving you $340 to work with. Overspend, and the shortfall carries the other way. The balance accumulates forward as the months close.

Note. Rollover is forward-accumulating — it credits from the month a transaction lands. It won’t retroactively rewrite a month that has already closed, which keeps past periods stable.

Turning rollover on

Rollover has two switches, so you can use it broadly or selectively:

  1. A global toggle enables the feature.
  2. A per-category opt-in decides which categories actually carry a balance.

That lets you roll over the flexible envelopes — groceries, dining, shopping — while leaving fixed ones like rent to reset cleanly each month.

Reading the signal

Thrift doesn’t nag. Whether you’re over or under shows on the figure itself rather than through badges or alerts — the number carries the meaning. A quick glance at Budget tells you where the month stands.

Tips

  • Start with a handful of categories you actually want to change. You can add more once the habit sticks.
  • Pair budgets with recurring transactions so fixed costs land on their own.
  • At month’s end, open Insights for the write-up — which categories moved, and by how much.