A template creates a whole set of budgets at once, from a known budgeting method, rather than one category at a time. Go to Budgets and choose Create from Template.
The four templates
- 50/30/20 Rule. Splits your income into Needs (50%), Wants (30%) and Savings & Debt (20%). The default starting point, and the same framework the Cashflow page uses for its analysis.
- Zero-Based Budget. Assigns every unit of income a purpose until nothing is unallocated, showing Total Income, Allocated and Unallocated as you go. Best for detail-oriented people who want every amount accounted for, the YNAB approach.
- Minimalist Budget. Tracks only Housing, Food, Transportation and Savings as essentials, and groups the rest under other expenses. Best if you want a few numbers you will actually look at instead of twenty you will not.
- Pay Yourself First. Puts a Savings Goal ahead of everything else, treating savings as a priority allocation and living expenses as what is left. Best if your aim is building an emergency fund or savings before anything is allocated to spending.
Each one shows what it is Best for and how many people use it, so you are choosing with some context rather than from the names alone.
The four steps
- Select Template. Pick the strategy that fits your goals.
- Monthly Income. Enter it once. It is used to work out the amounts from the percentages, and it is saved to your account settings for future use, so you do not retype it next time.
- Review Categories. This is the step worth slowing down on. Finthy shows each category with your monthly average beside the proposed budget amount, so you can see where the template’s percentage disagrees with your actual spending. Adjust the amounts here.
- Create Budgets. Finthy creates them and tells you how many.
Why the review step matters
A template allocates by percentage. Your spending does not. A 50/30/20 split might give groceries less than you have spent in every one of the last six months, and a budget you exceed in week two stops being information.
The monthly average shown next to each proposal is the correction for that. Where the two disagree, trust the average and adjust the template, not the reverse.
Good to know
- A template creates ordinary budgets. Nothing about them is special afterwards: each has its own type, period, rollover and alert threshold, and each can be edited or deleted on its own.
- You cannot build your own template. The four above are what Finthy offers. To get a set of your own design, create the budgets individually, which Save & Add Another makes quick.
- Running a template again creates more budgets; it does not replace what you have. If you are starting over, delete the old budgets first.
- The income you enter is stored on your account, so it is worth entering your real figure rather than a round number.