How do I create a new year's budget that includes inflation? (Q Mac)

WilBV

I will create my 2023 budget based off of my 2022 budget. But, we all know that costs have increased. So, I'd like to increase everything on my 2022 budget by 5%.

Is there an easy way to do that?

jacobs

No, there is no such feature for selectively applying an inflation adjustment to your budget.

UKR

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if there were a selection option for Inflation/Deflation adjustment of the entire budget when creating a new budget or extending one into the next year?

For example, this is for Quicken Windows, when starting the new year's budget one gets prompted:

What if there were an additional selection item like this?

• Inflation/Deflation Adjustment:
  Copy 20xx budget categories and budget values to 20yy and adjust by [+/-] [xxx.xx] percent

jacobs

@WilBV It's a reasonable feature request, so I'd suggest you create a new Idea post by navigating to:

     Quicken for Mac > Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac > Budgets and Planning Tools (Mac)

Post your feature request there, and other Mac users can vote for it if they agree it would be a good idea. (I'll vote for it!) Ideas which garner significant votes get forwarded to the developers for consideration.

Now, two caveats: (1) Don't expect anything to happen quickly. (2) There are a bunch of ideas specifically regarding the budget section of the program which have not yet been acted on. From some posts by the former Quicken Mac product manager, mty sense was that they were going to have to significantly re-write the budget section of the code in order to add the types of new features users have asked for (such as an actual-versus budget report on a user-denfined date, rolling over over/under-spending, having an "everything else" line for categories not explicitly budgeted, etc.) We have no idea if they are working on a budget re-write currently, or if it remains off in the future, or if there are some things they can do without re-writing the code.

The Keeper

I'm in my late 80's so sometimes my mind isn't that sharp so forgive me if I am missing something here. It's a fairly simple calculation.

If your monthly grocery budget is $600 and you want to increase it by 5% the new amount would be $630

600.00 X 5% = $30.00

Take each line item in your budget and increase it by 5%

WilBV

Thanks, and you are correct.

I should have been more specific in my question; when I ask is there an "easy way" to increase my budget by 5% for 2023 I'm asking for Quicken to do the math for me.

A better way to ask my question is:

Is Quicken able to create a new budget based on an existing budget but with an inflation factor of X%? I'd like Quicken to ask me what inflection factor to use and then have Quicken increase each line by that amount. Ideally, Quicken would allow me to select and unselect which categories are increased. For instance, my mortgage payment will not increase since it has a fixed rate. But categories like Food and Gasoline should be increased by the inflation factor.

Thanks

jacobs

No, there is no such feature for selectively applying an inflation adjustment to your budget.

UKR

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if there were a selection option for Inflation/Deflation adjustment of the entire budget when creating a new budget or extending one into the next year?

For example, this is for Quicken Windows, when starting the new year's budget one gets prompted:

What if there were an additional selection item like this?

• Inflation/Deflation Adjustment:
  Copy 20xx budget categories and budget values to 20yy and adjust by [+/-] [xxx.xx] percent

WilBV

Thanks for the responses folks. And UKR that's just what I'm looking for. Of course in my dreams that screen would also allow me to select which categories to apply the Inflation/Deflation Adjustment.

jacobs

@WilBV It's a reasonable feature request, so I'd suggest you create a new Idea post by navigating to:

     Quicken for Mac > Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac > Budgets and Planning Tools (Mac)

Post your feature request there, and other Mac users can vote for it if they agree it would be a good idea. (I'll vote for it!) Ideas which garner significant votes get forwarded to the developers for consideration.

Now, two caveats: (1) Don't expect anything to happen quickly. (2) There are a bunch of ideas specifically regarding the budget section of the program which have not yet been acted on. From some posts by the former Quicken Mac product manager, mty sense was that they were going to have to significantly re-write the budget section of the code in order to add the types of new features users have asked for (such as an actual-versus budget report on a user-denfined date, rolling over over/under-spending, having an "everything else" line for categories not explicitly budgeted, etc.) We have no idea if they are working on a budget re-write currently, or if it remains off in the future, or if there are some things they can do without re-writing the code.

WilBV

Thanks @jacobs, that's what I've done. We will see