Instructor said to budget using monthly funding goal?
I entered in my monthly funding goal for every category and now it seems to have messed up my budget somehow. I dont know how this monthly funding goal interacts with the budgeted column. It seems to double penalize me when i add a number into the budgeted column and then set a monthly funding goal.
Do you guys use the monthly funding goals or could i get by without using it? And was it just as confusing for you?
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I don't use goals at all because the quick budget features work fine for me (99% of the time I pick budget same amount as last month for all categories). It sounds to me like you have set a goal, then used quick budget features to fund the goal and then gone in and manually budgeted funds to categories so yeah, you've been double budgeting. Once the right hand column has a balance that you want, you stop adding funds to the left column. So before you add funds to a category, check the category balance to see where it is.
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jenmas Thanks for the reply. I'm also trying to really understand and use the Monthly Funding Goal feature. Let me know if I should post this as a new thread, but... is the idea with the Monthly Funding Goal, to fund it and then not fund it again until month-end (and is this month-end always the actual last calendar date of the month)? Seems to me that if I don't do that...that is, if I instead keep funding it so that the oval is green...all's I'm doing is spending and spending way more than I original intended by setting the goal $ amount in the first place...but feeling ok about it since I'm keeping the oval green...?
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Powder Blue Pegasus The monthly funding goal is for categories that you intend to fund the same amount every month. It could be for saving, it could be for spending.
For example, I have determined that I am going to spend $550 in groceries every month, so I would set the Monthly Funding goal to $550*. But I also want to set aside $300 for home maintenance and repair every month (a category where spending is lumpy and inconsistent), so I can use the monthly funding goal for that as well.
It's basically a template for how much you want to add to a particular category in every single month.
* Personally I will redeploy excess funds each month from certain categories if I don't spend all of it, so I can keep my monthly funding amount the same every month.
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I do use monthly funding goals for most categories as they make budgeting easier for me. The orange categories tell me immediately that funding is required. Since I stay at least one month ahead in budgeting I simply budget all new money as it comes in and fill the categories from top to bottom.
