Building a Budget

Before building the budget, Alex creates the remaining funds that the budget will reference. Some cover fixed expenses that haven’t come up yet; others represent longer-term goals.

• Financial Freedom — retirement savings that Alex will never spend before retiring. Once it accumulates, Alex transfers it to a dedicated savings account and leaves it alone.
• Long Term Spending — a fund for large future purchases: a car, a home down payment, or anything else that takes months or years to save for.
• Charity
• Amazon Prime
• Gym
• Internet
• Phone

With these in place, Alex has a fund for every category the budget will touch.

Creating the Budget

Click the + button in the Budgets column header. A dialog asks for a name. Alex types Paycheck and confirms.

The budget opens in the editor. At the top is the budget name — editable via the pencil icon — and the overflow fund dropdown. Alex sets the overflow fund to Emergency Savings.

The overflow fund receives whatever remainder is left after all phases complete. Alex chose Emergency Savings for a practical reason: if any fixed expense overdraws the remainder, the shortfall comes out of Emergency Savings automatically, and any surplus after all phases also flows there.

Phase 1 — Savings

Alex clicks + Percentage phase. This is the first thing that happens to every paycheck: savings come off the top before anything else is considered.

Alex uses the fund dropdown to select Emergency Savings and clicks + Add target, then repeats the process for Financial Freedom. Both are set to 10%:

• Emergency Savings at 10%, with a cap of $10,000.00
• Financial Freedom at 10%, with no cap

The cap on Emergency Savings means once the fund reaches $10,000.00 the budget stops contributing to it and the 10% flows forward to the next phase instead. The overflow fund comes into play at the very end, after all phases have completed.

Financial Freedom has no cap because the goal is to accumulate as much as possible over a lifetime. There is no ceiling on retirement savings.

Both targets run at the same time against the same phase balance — percentage phases do not deplete each other. A $2,400.00 paycheck puts $240.00 toward Emergency Savings and $240.00 toward Financial Freedom, leaving $1,920.00 for the next phase.

Phase 2 — Fixed Expenses

Alex clicks + Fixed phase. This phase covers every recurring bill. Fixed phases claim exact amounts from the running remainder one target at a time, executing top to bottom in the order they are listed. If the remainder runs out mid-phase, later targets get less — or nothing. So the order is a statement of priorities: rent and food are at the top because those are the bills Alex cannot go without, and Netflix is near the bottom because a missed month of streaming is an inconvenience, not a crisis.

Alex adds eight targets:

Overdraw is enabled for the five necessities. If the remainder runs out mid-phase, those targets pull it negative rather than going unmet — the shortfall comes from the overflow fund, Emergency Savings, which is exactly what it is there for. Netflix, Gym, and Amazon Prime have no overdraw: Alex can skip the gym or go without streaming for a month without real hardship.

The Two-Paycheck Cap

Most of these caps follow a simple rule: two months of the bill. Rent is $1,400.00 per month, so the cap is $3,000.00 — roughly two months with a little extra. Utilities run about $85.00 per month, so the cap is $200.00. This gives Alex a buffer: if a paycheck is delayed or an expense comes early, the fund already has enough to cover it.

The per-paycheck contribution is roughly half the monthly bill, since Alex receives two paychecks per month on average. Biweekly pay produces 26 paychecks per year rather than 24, so two months out of the year Alex receives three paychecks. The caps absorb the extra contributions naturally — once a fund is full, the budget skips it and the remainder flows forward.

The Amazon Prime Cap

Amazon Prime costs $150.00 per year, billed annually. Rather than scrambling for $150.00 once a year, Alex contributes $6.00 per paycheck — $150.00 divided by 26 paychecks, rounded up slightly. The cap is set to $300.00, covering two years of the subscription. When the bill arrives, Alex pays it from the Amazon Prime fund. The fund then refills over the following year.

This same pattern works for any annual expense: divide the cost by 26, round up, set the cap to two years of the bill.

Phase 3 — Personal Goals

Alex clicks + Percentage phase. This phase distributes whatever is left after savings and fixed expenses across four goals.

Alex adds four targets:

These percentages sum to 100%, meaning the full remainder is claimed under normal circumstances. The abnormal case is if the fixed phase pulled the remainder negative — a percentage phase receiving a negative balance distributes nothing, and the overdraw is left for the overflow fund to absorb. Alex is comfortable with this tradeoff: if income ever falls that short, the goals can wait.

The Completed Budget

Alex clicks Save. The Paycheck budget appears in the Budgets column on the main screen.

A Second Budget for Substitute Teaching

Alex also works occasional substitute teaching shifts. The pay varies — some months bring five days of work, some bring none — so a separate budget makes more sense than trying to fold this income into the Paycheck budget.

Alex creates a new budget named Substitute Teaching with the overflow fund set to Emergency Savings. The structure has three percentage phases.

Phase 1 takes savings off the top, just like the Paycheck budget: Emergency Savings at 10% (capped at $10,000.00) and Financial Freedom at 10%. Whatever a substitute teaching shift pays, the same savings logic applies.

Phase 2 is a single target: Dating at 20%, capped at $500.00. Alex wants date money but not an unlimited accumulation of it. Once the fund hits $500.00 the remainder flows forward to phase 3.

Phase 3 splits what is left: Flex at 50%, Long Term Spending at 30%, and Charity at 20%. Flex is higher here than in the Paycheck budget because substitute teaching is extra income — Alex wants to actually feel the benefit of picking up shifts, not just watch it disappear into long term goals.

The budget has no fixed expense phase. Savings and bills are already covered by the regular paycheck; substitute teaching income is pure surplus and goes straight to goals.

This structure also demonstrates something worth noting: you do not have to calculate what 80% of 20% is to express a rule like “save 20% first, then split the rest.” Each percentage phase operates on the remainder left by the previous one. Setting up a new phase resets the percentage math to 100% of whatever is left, which lets you express layered rules naturally without cross-phase arithmetic.

A budget in FundOS is a rule, not a schedule. It does not run automatically on a timer. Alex applies it manually to each income transaction, which means it works equally well for predictable biweekly paychecks and unpredictable one-off payments.