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
Answers to your questions
Yes. Origin offers partner access so you can manage your finances together at no additional cost. You’ll be able to filter transactions by member—making it easy to see which spending is yours and which belongs to your partner.
Yes. You can edit existing transactions and add new ones directly in Origin, so your records stay accurate and personalized.
Origin connects securely through trusted partners including Plaid, MX, and Mastercard.
Yes. Origin supports CSV uploads. You can upload a .csv file of your transactions, and we’ll import them into your account.
Yes. Your data is protected with bank-level security and advanced encryption. When you connect accounts through Origin, your login credentials are never shared with us. Instead, our partners generate secure tokens that let Origin access only the data you authorize—keeping your personal information private while enabling personalized insights.
Yes. You have full control to organize your spending in Origin. Transactions are automatically categorized by Origin, but you can always edit categories, add your own tags, and filter transactions however you like—so your spending reflects the way you actually manage money.
