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Budgeting - Moving Rollover Amounts Between Categories

Chris Harris

I have my various budget categories set to rollover from month to month. If my budget for food is set to $500, and I overspend in July by $100, I only have $400 left to spend in August. However, lets say I have two other categories (Clothing & Home Goods) that are under budget by $50 each which, technically "cover" my overage.

Two approaches:
1. Spend $100 less in August.
2. Transfer the $50 surplus from both Clothing & Home Goods to Food where the budget will now show $0 over/under.

My response to these two approaches:
For #1 - This method requires that you've set your budget high enough that you'll rarely go over in any given category. If not, your rollover amount quickly devolves into chaos returning worthless amounts with no basis in reality. We're on a very tight budget with no margin so this isn't an option for us. It's more likely that we will just keep going over each month in Food.

For #2 - From what I gather, there's no way to do this built into Quicken. Another program with 4 letters in it's name (that I shan't name) does this exceedingly well; but lacks in so many other ways compared to Quicken.

My Question: What workarounds have people found or steps do you use to approximate this movement of budget surpluses between categories within Quicken's budget?

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Comments

Sherlock

A budget is plan. If you're not following the plan, the plan is not going to work. If you have a tight budget and find that you're spending more than the amount you've allocated for food, you have only two choices: reduce the spending on food or reduce the spending on other things. If you think the overspending on food was a one-off and you'll be spending less than $500 going forward, I wouldn't change the budget at all. Over time, you should approach the amount you budgeted for food for the year.

Chris Harris

Sherlock, I understand that and, ideally, would use approach #1. Eventually, I'll probably switch back to #1 as the budget becomes less and less tight. However, there's another approach to budgeting (#2) where you "Roll With The punches" and adjust your base budget up and down by shifting funds from one category to cover overspending in another category. This is the approach of the "Sometimes A Vowel, Consonant, Vowel, Consonant" program.

I'm trying to replicate __ __ __ __ 's functionality as close as I can.

As I look at it, this seems to be be a more realistic approach for really tight budgets. I already spend less wherever I can.

My Question: What workarounds have people found or steps do you use to approximate this movement of budget surpluses between categories within Quicken's budget?

Sherlock

Chris Harris said:

Sherlock, I understand that and, ideally, would use approach #1. Eventually, I'll probably switch back to #1 as the budget becomes less and less tight. However, there's another approach to budgeting (#2) where you "Roll With The punches" and adjust your base budget up and down by shifting funds from one category to cover overspending in another category. This is the approach of the "Sometimes A Vowel, Consonant, Vowel, Consonant" program.

I'm trying to replicate __ __ __ __ 's functionality as close as I can.

As I look at it, this seems to be be a more realistic approach for really tight budgets. I already spend less wherever I can.

My Question: What workarounds have people found or steps do you use to approximate this movement of budget surpluses between categories within Quicken's budget?

I think you misunderstood what I suggested:

3. Do nothing
4. Reallocate

Chris Harris

Sherlock,

I did understand and do appreciate your advise with #3 & #4. Thank you for helping so many on the Quicken Forums. Since there appears to be nothing in Quicken that easily allows this movement, I may be forced to do nothing.

Still, I'd like to see if others have come up with any way of replicating __ __ __ __ 's functionality.