Joining catagories for budget

[daynah]

Is there a way to join catagories together? For example, on my paper budget, I have $50 to throw around on "fun" things... going out to eat, movies, shopping, ect. This covers a lot of different catagories in mint: Resturants and Fast Food (but not Food and Dining as a whole because that includes groceries), Entertianment, and Shopping.

If I put $50 for each of these catagories, the total ends up wrong and my alerts wont work right for the catagory that's most important for saving money: frivolous spending.

Any suggestions?

[Fizzler]

I would love to see this feature. Like you I have misc money budgeted that spans several Catagories. Food, hobbies, etc...

[danep]

I wholeheartedly agree. Though there have been many requests similar to this (such as mine (http://forums.mint.com/showthread.php?t=3833)) and they don't seem to have gotten much attention from developers :(

[kbrichter]

I agree that a budget bundling feature would be very useful!

A summary budget of say, Fast Food + Restaurants + Entertainment would be more ideal for me to monitor than creating a myriad of microbudgets.

Additionally, differentiating budget portions between tags (i.e. show 'spouse' contributions) and setting budgets on an annual basis would be much welcomed.

[pelaprat]

Yes, I also want this feature. Can we please group categories into a single budgets?

[trinovo]

Agreed! How are other people tracking mandatory vs. discretionary spending? I hoped that the new tagging feature would solve the problem, but you can't set a budget on a tag, and you can't make a rule (e.g. mortgage is always tagged with "mandatory".

This is really the last feature I need to be able to jump from Quicken. If I could switch from Quicken, I would be happy to pay a subscription fee to Mint.

[jazzygee]

The only reason I'm still using Quicken Premier is for budgeting purposes. I'm currently using custom categories to accommodate my budgeting needs (i.e. created custom categories under "Uncategorized" and created budgets for each custom category), but this setup destroys my ability to drill down into specific categories on the Spending Trends chart.

If Mint implemented the budget suggestion mentioned in this thread, I would gladly pay a monthly fee to Mint and ditch Quicken.

Thanks for listening!

[mburdsall]

I think that mint is great. I believe that it can be greater if it implemented additional features. On feature is greater flexibility with budgeting. These features for me would be:

1. The ability to base line different budgets with selected categories. For example, budget 1 would include category 1,2, 5 8, budget 2 would include 3 5, 7 and 8.
2. The ability to see trends over a period of time. Lets say the ability to trend budget vs. actual variances over the last year, quarter or month.
3. The ability to enter a budget for a year, or quarter and have it prorated over the appropriate periods.
4. The ability to have two dates on a transaction. The first date would be the original date of the transaction and the second would default to the first date but can be changed by the user. The budget graphs and reports should allow the user to use the second date so that transaction all into the correct period.
5. The ability to change budget numbers in past periods.
6. It would be nice for Mint to suggest a forecast amount based on previous history or average of available data.
7. Include income categories in the budget.
8. Show the budgets as a P/l statement.

[widgetkid]

I'm already setup on Quicken to manage my personal finances. What I hoped Mint would offer me is budget alerts/centralization of eating out information. Since I can't combine Fast Food and Restaurants (and separate them from Groceries), this doesn't do me much good. Close, but no cigar... and certainly no match for Quicken and an Envelope budgeting spreadsheet.

[erb]

mburdsall, I agree with all your suggestions! I especially like the idea of multiple budgets.

[stchur]

Simply being able to Budget based on your Tags, rather than being forced to choose a single category would solve the problem for me.

[justinswartsel]

I fully agree with the suggestions in this thread. Being able to group categories for budgeting, or at very least to budget by tag would be incredibly useful.

[mburdsall]

I agree that I would love to see the use of tags in the budgeting tool. I would also like to see:

1. managable date field to record the budget period of the transaction. If i send in a check at the end of the month and it clears in the next month I do not have away today to allow it be applied to the correct month.
2. a total line at the bottom that shows the total amount of expeditures not budgeted.
3. allow budgeting of income
4. show comparision of income & expeditures to last year, last month, last quarter or between user defined dates.
5. allow tags selection
6. allow unsed budget monies to be carried over to the next month.
7. allow for 12-13 month budgeting buckets so that you can budget for things like christmas and one time expenditures.
8. allow budgets to be changed in the past.
9. Provide better what if analysis
10. Allow the system to review yor hsitorical transactions in a catagory and suggest a monthly budget based on the historical pattern.

thanks

[greg_ehr@yahoo.com]

How do you manage saving money on Mint? I would like to be able to see how much money I can safely save a month based on the amount that is left for my bills and see how much I need to save to get to a certain goal. Such as early retirement planning.

[Grymloch]

Simply being able to Budget based on your Tags, rather than being forced to choose a single category would solve the problem for me.

Agreed, this would be an ideal solution for me as well.

[mburdsall]

How do you manage saving money on Mint? I would like to be able to see how much money I can safely save a month based on the amount that is left for my bills and see how much I need to save to get to a certain goal. Such as early retirement planning.

Mint needs to add income budgeting so that I can budget for savings income - expenses. I would also like to see a trend page that includes both expenses and income and therefore see my trend hopefully of increased savings over time in the past.

For future visbility it would be nice to have some cashflow analysis.

[qortra]

Fantastic suggestions! I just came across this problem in my own budget. Specifically, the groceries issue is real and annoying. For me, maintaining separate categories for fast-food and restaurants is ridiculous (I would love to combine them), but groceries needs to be separate. Tagging would definitely do the trick though: many-to-many relationships is the key.

[trinovo]

I'm still anxiously awaiting Mint's addition of tags to the budgeting tools, and realize there is another piece that hasn't been brought up in this thread. When you associate a Tag with a transaction, you should be able to make that Tag sticky in the same way you can always place a vendor in a category.

For instance, if I place a "Mandatory Expense" tag on my mortgage payment, Mint should allow me to create a rule to always apply the "Mandatory Expense" tag to mortgage transactions.

[kittelsoncarpo]

I think that is good idea. Joining them into one budget. In this situation, you can monitor your expenditures.

[mburdsall]

I agree taht doing budgeting by tags and/or categories would allow more felxibility and woul dbe very useful for me. I would rather they spend the time to iprove the bsic process of budgeting. Provide a greater horizon for in the past and future to change budgets.

[noktulo]

I totally agree. Mint needs this feature.