Flex spending

Flex categories share one budget

Some spending doesn't divide neatly into separate amounts — dining out, coffee, entertainment, and small purchases tend to trade off against each other. Mark those categories as Flex and they stop having individual budgets: they all draw from one shared flex budget, while their transactions stay categorized separately so you can still see where the money actually went.

Every household has one shared budget. It appears as a Flex card at the top of the Spending section on the budget page as soon as one category is Flex, and disappears — keeping its settings — when none is.

Making a category Flex

1. Hover the category on the budget page and click the gear (Edit category)
2. Turn on Flex budget
3. Click Save

Only spending categories can be Flex. A Flex category that is archived, or excluded from the budget, leaves the shared budget until it's restored.

Turning Flex on moves the category's whole spending history into the shared budget: past months and the shared budget's rollover balance change right away, and the category's own amount and rollover settings are kept but stop counting. Turning Flex off puts them back. The switch says so in the dialog.

Editing the shared budget

The Flex card starts with a Shared budget row (🪣 by default; you can rename it and choose another emoji). Its amount box works like any category's: type an amount, and choose whether it applies from this month forward or to this month only — see Creating your budget.

Hover the row and click the gear (Edit shared flex budget) for the full editor: Icon & Name, Amount, a Frequency of Every month or Every week, and Roll over unspent budget with its own Rolling over since month and Starting balance, which carry what's left of Flex spending into the next month — see Rolling over unspent budget. Amount changes in this editor apply from the current month forward.

Reading the Flex card

• The card header shows how many categories are Flex, the total they've spent, and the shared budget available this month.
• Each member row shows that category's own spending and Flex in place of an amount. Its bar is drawn against the shared budget and colored by the shared budget's status, so one category can fill only a little of its bar while the group as a whole is out of money.
• Click a member row for its panel: the category's own spending, with the group's position beside it — left in Flex, over in Flex, or short in Flex.
• Click the Shared budget row for the group's own panel, with the combined pace bar, its rollover equation, the transactions across all Flex categories, and the shared budget's own changes. A category joining or leaving Flex is recorded in that category's Activity tab.

Bills in Flex categories

Recurring bills in Flex categories count against the shared budget the way bills count against a category. When the shared budget rolls over, part of its carried balance is set aside for members' bills that come less often than monthly — see Recurring bills in your budget.

Common questions

Does Flex change how transactions are categorized? No. Each transaction keeps its own category, and cash flow and reports break Flex categories out individually. Only the budget treats them as one.

How does Auto set treat Flex? It proposes one shared amount from the members' combined history, scaled alongside your other non-critical categories. See Auto set.

Where did a category's rollover balance go when I made it Flex? It stopped counting, and comes back when the category leaves Flex. No balance is transferred: the shared budget recalculates its own balance from the members' spending history and its own amounts.