Lavender Router (8b33f3d07c2f) Sounds like what you need to do is make a monthly funding goal of $600 for groceries and $100 for eating out. When the first paycheck of the month hits you put $300 and $50 into those categories. It will show orange telling you that it needs more but you have it set for the second paycheck.

Lavender Router (8b33f3d07c2f) 

A couple of things which may help:

1. Blue Leopard made a post here where they spoke on dealing with the split in months with some being 4 weeks and some being 5.  https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/k9kllc/diy-budget-billing-for-almost-anything. In essence they noted that by multiplying their budget by 4.33 they were adequately covered for the months which had 4 weeks and the rollover from those months would cover those which had 5 weeks. 

2. Creating a budget template may also help which is shown in this link.  https://www.youneedabudget.com/how-to-create-a-budget-template/ It combines scheduled transactions with the different types of goals so that when I review my budget I can think of the timing of upcoming payments and how I can allocate funds if something is due after I get paid again.

3. If you haven't as yet I also found the classes very useful. The instructors have quite varied ways of approaching different scenarios and tend to give me a quick check to see if there are any elements I can improve in my budget.  https://www.youneedabudget.com/classes/

Lavender Router (8b33f3d07c2f) The template is well worth time and effort and is way better than manually inputting each paycheck, it takes some to set up but it saves you time in the future. If you have been using YNAB for a bit you can quickly start one by going into your register and changing recurring bills from a one-time thing, to monthly, every 30 days or whatever the frequency is.

Lavender Router (8b33f3d07c2f)  I think I understand what is bothering you. Check me is I am right. you are somehow calculating what you make into daily income. Say you make $2,000 a month, in Feburaryyour daily income would be $71.43 a day, in November is would be $66.67 a day, and in December it would be $64.52. Is this the problem?

Troy Miller For things that have to be paid weekly like my son's allowance, I do a scheduled transaction. I give him $40 a week. On the last payday of the month I look ahead a see how much upcoming payments for the month. (if you click on the allowance category you will see this). If it shows 5 then i put aside $120 and then mid month another $80 for the rest of the month. If it's 4 then i put $80. For food, we just try our best to stretch it. Eat what we have, but you can't do that for everything.

Troy Miller Tithing is easy.  Budget 10% of whatever is in TBB when you go to budget. You just need to make sure the rest of your budget goals can support that.

In addition, work your monthly budget to the point you can live off the same number of paychecks every month (so bi-weekly means 2, weekly means 4), and then the extra paychecks are exactly that.... extra. If you can live for 30 days on 28 days worth of money, you're in good shape. If you are relying on that extra paycheck, which comes only twice a year, things will be uncomfortably tight until you get one of those 3 paycheck months.

Troy Miller I've had that gross/net discussion before. I'm a firm believer in using net. But that's another discussion. 😉

The easiest way to auto-pilot your budget is to get a month ahead. As a YNAB4 user, I've been budgeting using the previous month's income for 3.5 years now. It takes some work to reach that point (though if you already have a large enough emergency fund, you can raid that to make it happen... you can always undo it if you need to), but trust me it's easier and once you get there, the LOE for budgeting is greatly reduced.

We're a two-income household on 2 different pay cycles. Mrs. nolesrule is biweekly and I'm semi-monthly.

What we do is when our pay comes in, we budget say $300 to groceries. That is expected to last the fortnight until we get paid again. When we get paid again I just add another $300 to the groceries category again.  However if we had overspent on groceries between pays, which we regularly do, I try and take some money from other categories to cover it so the groceries category is always 0 when new money comes in. 

Once you get ahead and budgeting with last months pay perhaps you could setup two separate categories for Fortnight 1 and Fortnight 2 groceries. That is the strategy I'm considering when I finally take the plunge to monthly budgeting(I've chosen not to make it a priority so far). But I'm still using YNAB4

HappyDance Say what??? This is a great tip, thanks for sharing!

I budget the full monthly amount; I use the Toolkit Extension to display that budgeted amount (allowing me to use the name section for other indicators); and I have a special emoji that I use to tell me that I am only funding, say, half of the category with each biweekly paycheck.  With the first paycheck of the month, I pay all of the monthly bills that are due in the first half of the month, then I go through and fill things like groceries halfway.  With the second paycheck of the month, I pay second-half-of-month bills (I use a little clock emoji with 1st or `15th, and arrange them in chronological order) and then put in the other half of the budgeted amounts for variable/discretionary line items.

(Actually, this is what I *was* doing, until a few days ago. Now we have unemployment/zero income and a lump sum of severance/back pay that we will eventually run out of, so I have set up a new Unemployment budget that lumps all the variable/discretionary categories into Week 1, Week 2, etc. -- and I adjust a bit so that Week 4 has more than the other weeks, to deal with those extra days. I just set this up, though, so I don't know how well it will work.)

Troy Miller I think any way to smooth out a true bi-weekly expense in a monthly budget program will, by nature, be a workaround.  As YNAB works, it would be possible to simply throw 14 days worth of budget at the Groceries category out of every bi-weekly paycheck; but the user would need to get used to the idea that the budget is not going to look the same from month to month, and he needs to look at the amount available in the Groceries category to make his spending decisions.

The idea of food "per day" makes me reflect on my own budget practice.  Right now, I happen to budget $300 per month to a Groceries:Food category.  That makes the math easy.  In theory, I could budget $310 for 31 day months, $300 for 30 day months, and $280 or $290 for February depending on whether it's a leap year.   In practice, my spending never comes in at exactly $300 anyway, and I do a true-up the next month to start the month with $300.

So in theory, suppose the bi-weekly budget for Groceries for a bigger family than my single person household is $300.  First bi-weekly paycheck, budget $300.  Subsequent bi-weekly paychecks, budget $300 less anything still available in Groceries when it's time to budget.  Come up with a way to handle the overspend if more than $300 is spent in a fortnight; if that happens mid-month (as will usually be the case), it would be consistent with the YNAB philosophy to budget $300 plus the deficit in Groceries when it's time to budget.  That turns Groceries into a bi-weekly budgeted line item; you just don't get monthly reports or monthly results that mean much of anything for that category.

I'm not sure about the theory of managing a complete budget where some things are budgeted bi-weekly and others are budgeted monthly.  I'm sure it could be managed, but even the most efficient way to manage it might add in enough complexity to be a challenge for people just starting to budget.

Troy Miller 

Bravo on finding a pattern that serves your family and keeps both you and your wife engaged in the process.  I attribute much of my own success in hitting my goals to date on the practice of dedicated budgeting. I'm pretty sure that I was able to do what I've done because I ritualized the process and entered my transactions daily.

Like your wife, I find great comfort and peace of mind in a predictable process, having a set amount of funds on a set date allowed me to plan efficiently. I have ritualized my interaction with my YNAB budget as well.  I have made a couple of gradual changes to my ritual along the way:  I no longer schedule my cash withdrawals to coincide with my salary or my spending, and my wallet cash is just another account to me. I also switched out my cash envelopes for YNAB category control and cash in my wallet. Despite co-mingling the cash for various categories together and carrying more cash than I need for the month, I have not strayed from my established funding and purchasing pattern.  I am able to stick to my budget. For years I used cash in envelopes to contain my spending on a category to a specific amount and a specific time-frame, and I think that doing that for so long has made it all second nature to me.  I thank that repetitive discipline for establishing a rhythmic pattern on my spending to one that is well below my means.

I now budget my entire month in a sitting at the beginning of the month (using last month's income). That too was a significant leap forward for me, one that contributed to my sense of accomplishment in the beginning and which has provided additional clarity and control on my spending. In addition to the psychological win, I found some efficiencies in budgeting in longer chunks of time.

Patzer It is not as difficult as you may think.  I suspect most of us who are paid fortnightly have had to deal with fortnightly, monthly, quarterly expenditure since our first pay.  
There is no need to worry about the monthly balance on a category that gets normally spent to its entirety, like groceries or rent.   What does it matter that a balance rolls over to the next month as the fortnight crosses a month?
Honestly I am confused that others are confused by the concept. 

I can understand it would cause issues for someone who had been always paid monthly and using YNAB, to then be paid fortnightly, but for those of us already fortnightly then using YNAB, it is not that hard.  

ZuleikaD Budgeting fortnightly does not = living pay cheque to pay cheque.  If there was zero in the bank accounts, then yes, but if there are funds then no.
I know with us, if a pay was late, it would not be a drama, we could still pay rent and buy groceries etc.  It would just mean raiding the emergency fund or one of the categories that is well funded, but not due for awhile. 

It is not like those of us who get paid fortnightly have different spending habits and spend every dollar as it comes in.  It just means we think on a fortnightly basis for a number of categories.  I would like to think that people are smart enough to get jump between thinking fortnight and monthly, I know I can and I don't think that I am that special for being able to do so ;) 

I have been finding the comments interesting on this and it is really not that complicated, as posted but others in this thread.  First and foremost Rule 1, budget for what needs to be paid before the next pay  (or however it is worded these days)  There is no difference to that rule whether you budget week, fortnightly or monthly.

Astrid 

+1

Troy Miller I'm confused now. If you are buffered, budget the whole month at once. That sounds much easier than having a wash transaction that moves money for you. Look at your average grocery spend, and budget that amount each month. Some months you'll probably be under that; let that money roll over. 

Most people will tell you that the flux between 28 and 31 days doesn't ultimately have an appreciable affect on our budgets to the extent that we need to budget extra for 31-day months. But actually, if you're buffered, you can handle that, too. Look at your average spend, divide it by the total number of days in the average (or just divide it by 4.33 and then by 7) to get the per-day number. Since you're buffered, at the beginning of the month, budget average * number of days in the month. 

It's remarkably straightforward. 

Troy Miller Why not withdraw monthly? Even better, why not stop using the cash envelopes? (I'm making a guess here based on the FPU leader in your ID.) YNAB is the cash envelopes, with the added benefit that your grocery category balance can't get left at home by mistake. 

I think most YNABers would disagree that your method is less work than budgeting once a month. Budgeting more than once a month is always more work than budgeting once a month. You can do thing as you wish, but there's a more straightforward way to do this one. 

Troy Miller Your method obviously works for you. I'm merely pointing out that if the goal is efficiency, your way is actually more work in the end. The time spent is obviously worth it to you! But if you're looking for the YNAB mindset, that mindset is "Budget the amount needed for groceries for the month at the beginning of the month. Spend based on the category balance." 

Troy Miller wash transctions aren't real transactions in your account. You have to deal with those; ignoring them, clearing them, what have you. You withdraw cash every two weeks to keep your wife happy, you have to deal with the risk of that. (Again with things that are more work but marital harmony is worth it!)  Your reports aren't accurate, based on what you describe. If you're inflowing money via transaction, your spending will net to zero. So you have to somehow keep track of your spending, if that record is important to you. 

Compare that to budgeting $500 once a month and then just spending from the category using whatever tender is most available at the moment. It's much easier. You don't have to believe me, but anyone here would tell you it is (and have, above). 

WordTenor You want to budget by the month on last month's income, and I want to budget by the month on last month's income; but that's not necessarily best for everyone for all categories.  This thread has put biweekly budgeting in perspective for me.

At the bottom, the purpose of the budget is to help control and optimize spending.  Much of this is psychological and behavioral; getting these aspects right is more important than getting the technical money management right, or minimizing the work involved.

I have categories where I salvage excess funds because having too much in the category could tempt me into making unwise or frivolous purchases with money that could be better used for some other category.  It's not much of a stretch to imagine someone who simply *thinks* of groceries on a biweekly cycle, and needs to have no more than 2 weeks worth of money in the groceries category at any point in time in order to properly control spending.  If that is the case, budgeting groceries biweekly makes a lot of sense.  It makes sense even if the rest of the budget is done monthly and with last month's income.

Patzer While I generally agree with others on this post that you seem to be heavily overthinking this (and clinging to a sense that it's impossible), I think i get what you are saying. This might be like what I ran into when we got a lump-sum severance pay. I tried to just fill out my budget for the next 2+ months (it was so pretty!) but then quickly realized that this would give us a false sense of security (because this is a set amount that will dwindle away to zero and then we will be screwed; while there will be unemployment insurance income, it is tiny in comparison to our expenses, and it too will run out).  I realized that budgeting twice a month for discretionary/variable spending had been a really useful tool, and that I was glad that we didn't have enough of a buffer yet that we were budgeting for a full month.  Frankly, when I am am checking my budget on the 10th of the month and trying to decide whether we can afford to grab takeout, my mind -- which already struggles to fully comprehend concepts like "time" and "money" -- is pretty much incapable of assessing a full month's worth of budget. Biweekly is about the furthers out that I can handle; maybe this will improve over time and as I build new habits. And with our new, precarious financial situation, what we need to do is review our spending and reset our expectations and goals each and every week.

 And just to add this, and this is important!  After I finished this post and wandered off to do some shopping, I looked at my grocery budget and realised it was inaccurate, because it was telling me what I have for the month, not this week!  I could easily overspend my budget this week because the app is telling me I have all this money that I cannot spend this week!!!  It's depressing because I do not feel in control.  The budget should not be green if I have a monthly goal of $400 on groceries, and I allocate the money to groceries, and then I spend $300 in the first week!!!  

Just make a weekly option please!  I'm not trying to match a paycheck, I am self employed so money comes in all over the place.  I am just trying to budget according to my routine.  Weekends are more expensive etc.  Unlike end-of-months, or beginnings, which do not match each other routine-wise.  

Anyway, I've seen enough self righteous preaching of monthly budgeting that I know it won't change.  Why I am I ranting here again?  Anyway, the app is still good, good enough that I will use it and I just have to adjust to a less practical way of budgeting my money and hope I don't make mistakes along the way.

johnboy I just want to say, about the being mostly broke thing, me too. I'm a student so...

I like @GBR's suggestion but I'll create one category for each week instead: groceries wk1... 

OR, since it actually makes more sense for me to budget daily: Create a category for overall monthly expenses, throw money in there as it comes in till I've budgeted my monthly spending average. Then pick money from that and throw into my daily categories...daily...

Plus

Create one category for weekends, another for workdays, and another for holidays that is hidden most of the year. To help with weekend spending being irregular.

johnboy There are other budgeting software out there that let you set budget cycles on a category by category basis. I find it too confusing.

On the other hand, I budget the same in every category every month. Doesn't matter if the month is 28, 30 or 31 days. In 4 years using YNAB, I've never had an issue with pacing. In fact I think I'd find myself spending less with monthly than with weekly, because the weekly number is so tight that I'd probably spend to zero each week rather than spending as necessary.

nolesrule Thanks for the reply.  I think when you have more buffer then you can afford to overestimate or underestimate your budget for the month because you have more wiggle room.  But when things are tight, I do not have wiggle room and these mistakes are costly, and also time consuming to adjust for.  Monthly is causing me to make mistakes because each month is different and I am trying to do too much manual adjusting.  I don't have the buffer to work with and to be honest, even though I know I am gaining ground on my weekly budget, it still feels like I am behind because I have so much left to budget for this month that I cannot afford.  And I am nervous because I don't think I can rely on my monthly budgets because they are full of manual calculations.  I need accuracy more than anything, and I need to closely manage my money. 

I would love to hear about other budgeting software that is as good as YNAB but does weekly!!!   I don't actually need individual categories to be done differently, just that everything is done weekly.  That would be great!  I know I would be getting ahead then, and I would know how much money I can spend before Monday.

johnboy You misunderstand me. I don't pad what I put in for a month. When I started YNAB, I chose to budget each month as if it was 4 weeks, and our family adjusted our spending habits.

That's not going to work with a category like gasoline where prices fluctuate and you have to drive to work, but most everyday spending categories you can adjust your habits to decrease your spending. The difference between 28 days and 31 days is only 10%.

The result of this change is an increase in ability to save and meet your goals faster. We do have plenty of padding in our budget... now. Because we tightened our spending.

One other piece of advice.... if you weren't using a short hand to describe it, split up that play money into multiple categories.

johnboy 

johnboy said:
Monthly is causing me to make mistakes because each month is different and I am trying to do too much manual adjusting.

 You need to do something that the program is not designed to do.  So you need to be a little creative to meet your needs.  I don't have a problem with a monthly grocery budget, but you need it to be weekly to control your spending.  Okay, I get that.  How do I work with the need to have $100 per week, rather than $400 or $500 per month, in a grocery budget?

Possible solution #1:  If you are paid weekly, simply budget $100 to groceries out of every paycheck, when you are  paid.  Problem solved.

Possible solution #2:  If you are on some other pay schedule, but your grocery expense is weekly and you need a weekly number to help control your spending, this is what I come up with:  Create a cash account for budget adjusting transactions.  Mine has the snappy name, "Budget Adjustments."  Create a category with a name like, "Future Groceries."  This is in addition to your regular Groceries  category, which you will continue to use to monitor grocery spending.  Each month, budget $400 or $500 to Future Groceries, depending on whether it's a 4 week or 5 week month according to your grocery spending category.  In the Budget Adjustments account, create a weekly recurring transaction for a total of zero, with $100 outflow from Future Groceries and $100 inflow to Groceries.  Put that transaction on whatever day of the week makes sense for your grocery spending cycle

What solution #2 will do:  You will be budgeting Future Groceries like all the standard advice says to budget.  Each week, $100 will be split off and show up in Groceries as an inflow, putting money in the Groceries category.  When you go grocery shopping, use the amount Available in the Groceries category to guide your spending.

Of course, you won't be able to use built-in YNAB goals for the Groceries category, and the goals might not be sophisticated enough for the Future Groceries category.  But the system should work, as long as you can live with figuring out how to behave with goal-created color codes.

Patzer This may work...  I really appreciate the advice, and I might implement it.  I am self employed so I do not have regular income.    

So I could budget $433 for groceries each month into a category called Groceries-monthly.  Setup an auto transaction each week into another category called Groceries-weekly of $100.  That way I will actually know what my weekly budget is.  I just need to make sure I have the money in the monthly budget.  

I'm not sure why I wouldn't be able to use the goals??  Anyway, thanks again!

p.s. I still think they should just give a weekly option.. :P

johnboy hmmm.. this isn't as easy as I thought..  It would be great to have an automatic way of moving my money to another budget category.   

This is the problem...  This should just be a simple matter and not require these long winded solutions...  :(

johnboy It's not that you can't use goals, it's that you will find that sometimes they aren't flexible enough to capture what you want to do.  For example, I have some categories where I want to budget $X per month, to a cap of $YY.  I could create a goal of budgeting $X per month, or I could create a goal of budgeting to the amount of $YY, but I can't create a goal that says, "Budget $X per month until you reach $YY, then stop."  For categories like that, the colors created by goals don't help me. 

So I don't use goals for much, and I haven't really thought through the implications of how they'd work with the ideas I described for weekly budgeting.  I just had a kneejerk reaction that they wouldn't be flexible enough.

Patzer I can't find a way to do an inflow and outflow in the one transaction...I guess I can do two transactions, but this will have knock-on effects to my revenue reports.  hmmmm..   I'm starting to get over budgeting..

nolesrule Yeah but the difference between 4 weekends and 5 weekends is much more than 10%.  It's all good.  I'm a lost cause.  I don't think anyone is going to convince me that monthly is better than weekly.  It seems so obvious to me...

johnboy 

If you always spend exactly the same amount every week on groceries, and you are satisfied with your diet, and you don't have significant food going to waste, then I agree with you that a weekly budget is the way to go for you. Your issue seems to be one of pacing. If you need the assistance of scarcity to stay on pace and not overspend this week, you could create a holding category to slowly replenish your other categories every week. I can tell you that after years of doing this, my ability to stay on pace is quite remarkable. I would not have envisioned me doing this.

I can speak to the difference in planning by the week versus the month. In my first year of budgeting, I pulled out $100/week out in cash for groceries and I spent every dollar. If I didn't spend it on groceries, I felt justified in spending the remainder on anything else, almost like a reward for staying on/under budget.

After shifting to a monthly perspective and paying attention to meal planning, batch-cooking, buying in bulk when items were on sale, and saying 'no' to treats I really didn't need, I reduced my grocery spending by more than half. Coincidentally, I noticed a massive reduction in food going bad and being thrown out.  It seems I was not a very efficient food shopper when I was spending $100/week.

I reduced my spending gradually by challenging myself to spend $25 less this month or 10% less until I reduced my spending to essentials. I still spend less today than I did when I started twelve years ago, and that is despite inflation and the downslide of our Cdn dollar against the US dollar, considering we truck in most of our fresh food from the US in the winter. No, I don't spend the same amount every week. Last week I spent $158.75 on food, more than half my grocery budget for the month, but in addition to fresh items for the week, I included pantry items (on sale), and a few bulk freezer items (also on sale).  Based on my list today, I expect my grocery bill will be around $35 for a few fresh staples since I will be relying on what is in my pantry and freezer as well.

johnboy you can do it as a split transaction.

johnboy I don't know if this will help you, but I'll share what I've just set up (I'm in a position where I have to control our spending, as we are unemployed and we need to stretch severance pay as far as possible, and I'm finding we NEED to budget weekly).

1) I have a master category for regular obligations/bills that happen every 1, 2, or 3 months, which I have filled from our pot 'o money.   (The way to handle this with weekly or biweekly or inconsistent pay is to indicate when each item is due, then arrange them chronologically and fill them in as money comes in.)

2) I have a master category for upcoming true expenses that *must* be funded immediately. If we had regular income, this might come after variable/discretionary items; the main principle in play is that these are things to deal with once a month, or to fill in with each subsequent paycheck.

3) Here is where I really deviate from the monthly approach: I have created a master category called "Week 1-Necessities (*weekly goals*)" that a) has a category called "Wk 1: Necessities Funding."  We will have some income (unemployment), and this is where I am going to put the week's necessities funding as it comes in, and this category will act as my TBB pot for this master category.  The goal total is the sum of all other categories in this Master Category. b) My categories are named   "Wk1: Groceries," and etc."  

*In order to consider this on a higher-level budgeting basis and strategize on a monthly basis, which @HappyDancer speaks to above, I have created a master category called "Monthly Budget Reference: Necessities," in which I set monthly goals for each of my categories.  (The most methodical way to do this would be to determine a weekly amount, multiply by 52, and divide by 12. I have been using a monthly budget, so I just drew from that.) Because I am using the Toolkit, I can see what the monthly goals are at a glance. I mostly used this to set up my weeks, and will only update it if we decide we can or need to change the monthly budgeting.  

*Each goal has a weekly budget.  Week 1-3 goals are identical, while Week 4 is a bit larger. I considered dividing by 4.33, but decided that for now I really want to have a hard stop for our spending, and not try to remember that I need to leave a little extra during weeks 1-3. So instead, I am just eyeballing it and making sure there's a reasonable amount for the extra 2-3 days. (For groceries it's not that important, but for things I purchase daily I make sure to actually fund those days.) 

*My intention is to WAM only within the master category. We'll see how that works. And my thinking is that I'll use that "TBB" Funding category to collect any moneys left at the end of a week, and then put that TBB money for a future month's spending or to help WAM for unexpected expenses.

4) My other Weekly master category is "Week1-Quality of Life" (eating out, entertainment, stuff like that). This also has a Funding master category for reference. 

5) My thinking is that as Week 1 ends, I will actually move those two Week 1 master categories down to below Week 4, so that each week the relevant categories will be at the top. We'll see if that's too much work.

I realize that having so many categories will make it really onerous if I decide that the weekly budget amounts need to change, but I am willing to put in that effort to get this level of control.

Beige Hail Thanks for such a detailed response.  My free trail actually expired, and funnily enough, I am too broke to pay for it.  I think the app is good, but it doesn't help people in our situation.  As you said.  Monthly is just not an option and I don't have time to be trying to come up with a good system for managing peanuts.  The return isn't there.  I actually wasted a lot of time on various budgeting apps.  I would say YNAB is the best, and I might go back to using it once I think I have a chance of making a monthly budget work, but for now, I'll just go back to looking at my bank balance.     

johnboy Have you tried a free envelope budgeting app?  YNAB is essentially a complex envelope system, albeit one that helps keep you working only with money you have. 

Beige Hail I've tried quite a few budgeting apps, and had problems with them all.  Mainly, I am just spending too much time on my budget instead of trying to earn money.  I don't think I say any other envelope systems though, so happy to get recommendations.  However, I am loathe to spend more time on these apps.  One of the last things I did with YNAB was adding a credit card for a payment, and that was very confusing when I wanted to pay it off.  Anyway, it was a good learning experience.. 

BlueJhay Thanks bluejay, this is also an interesting idea!  I'm going to try the budget adjusting account first, but typing in some details into the category itself could be useful.  I'm just trying to move away from the manual adjustments.  For example.  I have a weekly budget of $100 for food, but I know that in the 1st week I blew that budget because I had a fancy dinner party and so I spent $150.  I don't want to take out the extra spending from my monthly food budget so I need to add to the total budget.  But this also makes it difficult for me to work out what my weekly budget is because my monthly totals are adjusted and unusual.  Again.. thanks for the tips!!

johnboy No problem! Glad I can help spark some ideas.

So for you, maybe you can make a category or 2, like so:

"Groceries/Household Goods $100wk/$400mo" - Then you can see that you need to try and put $100 aside each week, or $400 a month, in order to stick to your budget goal.
Laundry soap, groceries, etc are budgeted under this, which I have grouped under my "Recurring expenses" category because I know I need to get groceries at regular intervals.

"Dining/Takeout $50wk/$200mo" - This shows that you can try to set aside $50 a week or a total of $200 a month, in order to keep this item in check.
Any time I eat out, go to a drive thru, get take-out or delivery, including any convenience store/gas station junk food -- I categorize them under this one, which is grouped under "Just for Fun" to remind me that it may be fun to eat out & not cook, but that I can easily cut corners with this frivolous expense. Groceries save me money; dining out doesn't. :)