
Monthly Spend Goals

I've been trying to use Monthly Spending Goals and coming unstuck. It seems to be more of a Monthly 'funding' goal than a monthly spend goal - example
Eating Out - Set Monthly Spending goal to $300
End up spending $450 but cover $150 by moving from another category
The Monthly Spending Goal says I have reached the goal and icon is green. But it shouldnt be. I have missed the goal by +$150 and the icon should not be green as I overspent v what I set out to do at the start of the month.
Does that make sense?
Would be intrigued if anyone has successfully set spend limit goals in YNAB.
Cheers
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It's designed to handle the case when there are leftovers. The following month will fund less in order to have $300 Available. In contrast, a monthly funding goal would blindly add $300, resulting in more than desired.
It is mostly equivalent to a monthly funding goal combined with sweeping categories to zero at the end of the month.
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Hey Navy Blue Beat ! jonty and dakinemaui are spot on here. The Plan Your Spending: Monthly Goal is designed to help with categories where the amount rolls over. I've asked our team to see if we can clarify the language in the Goals HelpDoc!
If you set the goal to spend $300.00 this month, and only spent $250.00, the $50.00 would carry over to next month. In the future month, the goal would ask you to budget $250.00.
You moved money to cover the overspending, which is great! The goal has been met, so the Available column will be green.
There isn't a goal type to limit your spending, you can let our team know you'd like to see one by submitting a Feature Request. Thank you so much! -
Nicole said:
There isn't a goal type to limit your spending,The spending by date goal attempts to do just this. Overspending will lead to budgeting less in future months.
Personally, I feel this is at odds with Rule 3 -- I would want to short a LOWER priority category next month rather than this particular category that has been demonstrated to be important enough to warrant additional funding. Whether that's true for you is a separate topic, however.
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Actually, after sleeping on it I’m going to go back on my own words a little bit. Both monthly goals do kind of limit spending.
In this case the OP overspent and it would have been red to show an overspend. Just like the OP wanted. It’s only gone back to green because of a conscious decision to acknowledge the overspend and move more money there.
There’s no point in it remaining red forever. The whole point is to roll with the punches and deal with the overspend.
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Nicole said:
If you set the goal to spend $300.00 this month, and only spent $250.00, the $50.00 would carry over to next month. In the future month, the goal would ask you to budget $250.00.Hi Nicole,
This is the part that is driving me up a wall. What you said above is exactly how I would expect it to behave, but for me it's not doing this.
I have a category with a Monthly Spending goal of $500, but I only spent $450 in January. When I look at February, it insists I have to budget the entire $500 to satisfy the goal. No matter what I do, I can't make the bubble green (goal satisfied) except by budgeting another $500, which makes my available go to $550. I can't move the $50 elsewhere without it going back to yellow. What am I missing??