Budgety Discuss

I want to setup my May budget. Here are my questions:

Income) I have 2 part time jobs, paid on the 1st and 15th of each month. The pay check amounts can be different by quite a bit sometimes. When I'm setting up my income, it seems to me that I kind of have to forecast how much money I think I'm going to have? Is this correct?

Expenses) Under getting my expenses together, does this mean just determining my budget amounts for each category?

Also, do I assign deposits to an income category? When I import my bank transactions, my deposits are listed in there. Am I supposed to assign them to a category?

Income: At this point, you have to set your forcasted amount. The idea behind a zero based budget, is to write down your income, then spend your money down the page until there's none left. The goal is to make sure every dollar goes somewhere. If you have an irregular income, this can be difficult. You may want to guess at an amount that you can expect every single month, then budget off of that amount. Anything extra goes toward debt, savings, etc.

Expenses: Determining the budget amounts just sets a goal for yourself, but you need to know if you're meeting your goals! That's why it's important to track your expenses, or transactions.

Income Categories: Yes, you can assign them to an income category. Also, make sure you check the box on the transaction that says "this is income". If you're importing your transactions, it should try to do this automatically. Income shows up as green amounts.

Hi Beau,

I have another question. I'm still struggling with this budgeting concept because of timing issues. For example I got a notice that if I pay a bill today that I won't have to pay any further finance charges. So I'm considering paying off this bill but I'm not sure if I'll have enough money left for the other bills left in this month plus the ones that hit at the beginning of the next month.

Is this something that budgety can help me with? If so, how? Currently I'm actually handwriting a budget by week not by month so that I can see on which date the bills hit and if my income is there for that date and also for the bills in the future weeks of that month.

I'm wondering if this is a situation that will resolve itself as my income grows and stabilizes. I would definitely appreciate any thoughts/tips you have on this situation.

Cynthia, sorry to take so long to get back to you!

That's actually a very common problem. It sounds like it's an issue of living paycheck-to-paycheck, and not having a nice cushion in your life.

As you get money in the bank, it'll make it much easier to not have to worry about overdrawing your checking account, or running out of money.

I know many people who use last month's income for the current month, so they're always a month ahead. This enables them to be 100% sure that they have the money in the bank for their entire budget!

If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, you just have to be extra careful with your finances and work hard toward getting that nice padding between you & life so you can live without the stress of it!

Hope that helps, and maybe encourages you!

Hi Beau,

How can I verify that my subscription was cancelled? I think I changed it so that it would NOT renew but I'm not sure. I want to make sure I did cancel it so it doesn't bounce on me.

Cynthia, I just checked your account, and it is set to "Stop Auto-Renew", which means you can keep using Budgety until your next renewal date, then it will expire without charging you again. You should be good to go!

Is there any reason you'd like to share about why you decided to stop using Budgety?

Thanks for giving it a go!

Hi Beau,

thank you for confirming.

The reason I want to stop using Budgety is because I'm trying to streamline all of my paper keeping tasks. My CPA suggested that I just download the transactions from the bank website straight to a spreadsheet and then she could help me from there. It's more of trying to remove any extra, un-necessary steps from all the paper work and computer work I'm having to do NOT because I don't like Budgety, I do, especially the interface.