What happens if I overbudget to a category where I’m tracking debt, not savings?
Case in point:
I recently added my mortgage to my Savings budget and marked the category as ‘Debt’ so I can use the Debt Tracker.
I’m on a bi-weekly payment plan, so most months there are two payments but a couple of times a year there are three in a month. I want to set aside the same amount each month, so I’ve budgeted for the average, and most months the actuals come in a bit under budget.
How would you handle this? Right now it looks like that extra amount is just disappearing from my budget at the end of each month, which is suboptimal for lots of reasons.
That is a very good question, and I think you are right that the extra amount will just disappear. I’m in a similar situation in that I want to apply some savings to my debt payoff category so I can remove it from my monthly budget, but again as you mentioned debt tracked categories don’t support savings so I am at an impasse.
In your case, I would map out the payment dates and increase the budget by 50% for months with 3 payments. It’s not ideal that the budget varies every 6 months, but it does get around the inability for debt categories to accumulate savings.
Thanks for confirming this is your experience too! I know the debt tracker is still relatively new, so hopefully it will only get more functional from here on.
For now, I think you’re right that my best bet is to map out the payment dates and budget accurately for each month. I’ll probably create a separate savings category for those extra payments so I can spread out the hit, but that’s just me. At least it’s a predictable schedule so it’s easy enough to plan around.