Hi All - I am using the savings budget and sometimes I have an expense that is more than expected/budgeted, like a medical expense or something. This requires a transfer from my savings to checking. I was curious if people have thoughts on the best way to show this in the budget. Do I just show it as a budget overrun or do I fund that category with the transfer from savings? I am guessing this is a budget 101 question, but appreciate it.
Thanks,
Good question, I’d also love to hear how others handle these!
I don’t believe in allowing a budget to remain red for the month. Something’s got to give when this happens, so I have to pick and choose which other budget will suffer for my over-spend! Of course, if there is no other budget money that can be transferred, it would have to remain in the red.
If it is a truly unexpected expense, I have a category for “Unplanned Pet”, “Unplanned Car”, and “Unplanned House”. Instead of running another category over, I put the item into one of those groups. Since you’re pulling the money from savings, you have the money and could add a budget category for those that span the year. I think Budget Plan has a “Annual AVG Year” where it would roll up into that.
Thanks. Can you explain why you do this? What’s is the benefit as you see it?
This makes sense. You feel this is the best approach so that the next year you can see if you need to make adjustments to the budget
Thanks,
Many users leverage the approach @jemmoa7 mentions, @fost9508. Budgets can’t always be spot on but usually when one category goes over there is somewhere else that has some slack. The Savings Budget is built to quickly implement balanced budget transfers to address issues like this… and keep everything in the greeen.