How to Use Origin’s Budget Tagging + Grouping Feature Effectively

 Practical tips to organize your spending—and actually stick to your budget.

Budgeting doesn’t just mean setting limits; it means understanding where your money is going and why. That’s where Origin’s tagging and grouping features come in. With just a few tweaks, you can make your budget more insightful, more personalized, and way easier to manage.

Here are five ways you can make the most of these features.

Group categories by lifestyle themes

Instead of setting isolated budgets for Restaurants, Groceries, and Meal Kits, group them into a single Food budget. The same goes for:

• Skincare, Therapy, and Gym → Wellness

• Streaming, Concerts, and Books → Entertainment

• Taxis, Gas, and Car Maintenance → Transportation

Why it helps: You’ll stop sweating small shifts between categories and focus on the total picture of your spending behavior.

Use tags for personal accountability

Tagging lets you track spending trends across any theme you care about, regardless of category. Some ideas:

• Tag splurges you regret (say, a tag marked “impulse”) vs. purchases that brought you joy (a tag saying it was “worth it”).

• Tag shared expenses with a partner (for example, “shared” or “getting half back”).

• Track seasonal spending (e.g., “holiday,” “travel,” “birthday”).

Why it helps: Over time, your tags reveal patterns that aren’t obvious at the category level, so you can reflect and adjust smarter.

Budget by group to focus on priorities

Origin now lets you set monthly budgets at the group level. To get started, go to Edit Budget and choose whether you want to budget by categories or groups. From there, you can say, “I only want to spend $600 on my Food group this month,” even if that’s split between restaurants and groceries.

Pro tip: Try setting your group budgets first, then work backward to assign category-level targets.

Why it helps: You don’t need to micromanage every dollar.

Check group trends to course-correct fast

Once you’ve been using groups for a few weeks, filter your Breakdown & Budget view by Groups (not Categories) to see which ones are trending over or under. This makes it easier to spot patterns and adjust before small overspends turn into big ones.

If your Shopping group is consistently over budget while Wellness is under, that’s a cue to rebalance — not to restrict, but to realistically realign with your goals and habits.

Ready to try it?

Budgeting by groups and tags isn’t about limiting yourself. It’s about creating a structure that reflects your real life — and your real values.

Try it today:  👉 Log in to Origin and customize your budget now