Household and Family Budgeting in SavePoint
Money is often a team sport, and SavePoint is built for couples and families just as much as individuals. This guide explains the household modes, how to add members and assign roles, and how contribution rules let everyone pull toward shared goals fairly. You will also see where household settings apply across the app and how to edit them later as your situation changes. If more than one person touches the money, this is how you keep everyone on the same page.
SavePoint can track finances for a single person, a couple with shared finances, or a multi-person household where every transaction is attributed to a specific member. The Household feature ties everything together: accounts, transactions, budgets, balance sheets, and reports all become aware of who owns what. You set this up once during the Setup Wizard and refine it anytime in Settings > Household.
SavePoint offers three household modes during setup and in Settings > Household. The mode controls how much detail SavePoint asks for and how visible household features are across the app.
👤 Just me (or one shared household ledger)
This is the default Solo mode. SavePoint tracks finances as a single ledger and hides household-specific controls (the member filter on Balance Sheet, the Owner column on Transactions, the Member filter on Reports). Choose this if you are tracking your own finances or if you and a partner manage everything jointly with no need to attribute individual transactions.
👥 Multiple people, shared finances (Simple)
Use Simple mode when two or more people share finances but you do not need to split every transaction. SavePoint tracks each member by name, color, and emoji. You can tag accounts and transactions with an owner, but SavePoint will not force splits or require contribution percentages on every entry. Reports gain a member filter so you can see "Sarah's spending" or "Tom's contributions" without manual sorting.
🧮 Multiple people, detailed splits (Advanced)
Advanced mode unlocks split-aware transactions, per-member budget attributions, and contribution-rule based allocation across all features. Choose this if you need to answer questions like "what percent of our joint expenses did each of us cover?", "how much did each member contribute to the emergency fund?", or "what is my net worth separate from my partner's?" The Household Budget Report and Member filter on Reports become especially valuable in this mode.
Each household member has a name, optional short name, color, emoji, and role. The short name and emoji are what you see in filter chips, the Owner column on Transactions, and the per-member buttons on Balance Sheet. The color is used throughout charts so each person has a consistent visual identity.
🪪 Member Fields
- Name (required): The full name of the household member. Example: "Sarah Johnson".
- Short name (optional): A short identifier used in compact UI elements like filter buttons. Example: "Sarah" or "SJ".
- Color: The color used in charts, filter chips, and member badges. Pick something distinct so members are easy to tell apart at a glance. This is the same color regardless of what theme you use.
- Emoji: An emoji chosen from the categorized emoji picker (18 categories with search by emoji name or category). The emoji appears next to the member's name throughout the app.
- Role: One of Primary, Member, Dependent, or Business. Used for reporting and filtering. Primary is the default member for new transactions when "Set as default member" is checked.
- Set as default member for new transactions: Checkbox in the Add/Edit Member modal. When checked, new transactions are pre-attributed to this member unless you change the Owner field.
When household mode is Simple or Advanced, SavePoint can use a default contribution rule to suggest how shared expenses are split. You set this once and SavePoint applies it as the starting point for split-aware features.
- Equal split: Shared expenses are divided evenly across all members. For two people, that is 50/50.
- Proportional to income: Shared expenses are split in proportion to each member's income. This is sometimes referred to as dividing up expenses equitably. If Sarah earns $80K and Tom earns $60K, Sarah's share is roughly 57% and Tom's is roughly 43%.
- Custom percentages: You define the percentages directly. Useful when income is uneven but you want a different split (e.g., 60/40 for cost-of-living reasons rather than income).
The contribution rule is a default; you can override it on individual transactions when needed.
Once household mode is active, SavePoint surfaces member-aware features in several places. None of these appear in Solo mode.
📊 Balance Sheet: Member Filter Bar
A filter bar appears above the view-mode buttons with one button per member, plus All and Joint. Click a member to see only their accounts and the net worth calculated from those accounts; click Joint to see jointly owned or shared accounts. Each member button uses the color and emoji you assigned them. Exports (PDF or CSV) respect this filter, so a single-member export contains only that member's data.
🏦 Account Creation: Account Owner Field
The Add Account form gains an Account Owner dropdown with options Unassigned, one per household member, and Joint / Shared. The chosen owner determines how this account is grouped in the Balance Sheet member filter. You can leave this Unassigned for accounts that do not belong to any specific person (e.g., a placeholder or external account).
💳 Transactions: Owner Filter and Default Member
The Owner filter narrows the transaction list to a single household member, to Unassigned, or to All. New transactions are pre-attributed to your designated default member (set in Settings > Household). In Advanced mode, splits can be assigned to different members per line so a single transaction can record "Sarah paid 60%, Tom paid 40%".
💰 Budget: Member Filter, Income For, and Paid By
The Budget page gains a member filter strip across the top, and each income line carries an "Income For" selector while each expense line carries a "Paid By" selector. Filtering to a single member splits shared transactions by your household contribution rule so you see only that member's share. A $200 grocery bill marked Shared appears as $100 for each of two equal-split members.
📈 Reports: Member Filter
Most reports now expose a Member filter so you can scope analysis to one person at a time. The Household Budget Report is built specifically for multi-member households and shows per-member contribution and spending in a side-by-side layout. The Tag Summary and Tax Summary reports also expose this filter.
🎨 Shared Emoji Picker
Both the Add/Edit Household Member modal and the Add/Edit Tag modal use the same categorized emoji picker. Click the preview circle to open it. The picker has 18 categories (Financial, Home & Living, Utilities & Services, Transportation, Food & Dining, Shopping & Retail, Health & Medical, Recreation & Entertainment, Education & Work, Travel, Taxes, Charity & Donations, Debt & Loans, Subscriptions, Pets, Family & Kids, Gifts & Holidays, Symbols & Icons) and a search box that matches both emoji names and category names. Searching collapses the category tabs and returns a flat results grid.
Everything you set up in the Setup Wizard's Household step can be changed later in Settings > Household. You can switch modes (Solo / Simple / Advanced), add or deactivate members, change the contribution rule, or rename the household. Deactivating a member preserves their historical data but hides them from new filter chips and dropdowns. The Settings > Household tab is the authoritative location for ongoing household management; the Setup Wizard step exists mainly to get you started quickly.
If you are not sure whether you need Advanced mode, start with Simple. SavePoint stores enough data that switching to Advanced later is non-destructive. The reverse is also true: if you find Advanced too granular, you can downgrade to Simple and the extra detail stays in the database but is hidden from the UI.