Yearly budget

[darkestvdragon]

I'm not sure what to call this, but I think it would be really helpful to be able to see my budget for the overall year, i.e. being able to see that I've allocated $1500 for groceries this year and I've spent $1200 or whatever. It would be beneficial for non-monthly expenses, I think, like gifts or auto insurance or for people who pay some bills quarterly.

[zingsb1]

I couldn't agree more! I'm taking a Financial Freedom class and one of the themes is the importance of an annual budget. The instructor (who has a CFA and has been working as a Financial Planner for over 20 years) insisted that people who work with monthly or weekly budgets will usually lose the forest for the trees. By compiling an annual budget, it is much easier to incorporate those random car repairs, insurance or tax bills, etc that don't occur every month. I think the monthly budget feature is useful, but it'd be really nice to have an annual budget option as well!

[mburdsall]

I agree on the yearly budget view. I would also love to be able to see compaision of this year over last year or last period.

[staybalanced]

I agree; but if I had to select one over the other, I would really enjoy the ability to add a 'quarterly budget'... there are certain bills (as mentioned) that only occur on a quarterly basis and therefore, the only way to 'sort-of' track them in mint is break the qty down to a monthly number and have 2 months be under and 1 month be way over.

To define $$ budget for YY period of time would be great.

[exquicken]

I agree; but if I had to select one over the other, I would really enjoy the ability to add a 'quarterly budget'... there are certain bills (as mentioned) that only occur on a quarterly basis and therefore, the only way to 'sort-of' track them in mint is break the qty down to a monthly number and have 2 months be under and 1 month be way over.

To define $$ budget for YY period of time would be great.


Im a quicken budget power user. The essence of the use case is that not all transactions fall within a month and even though we budget monthly if I pay my rent on the 1st instead of the 31st, all of a sudden the budget is completely out of whack. This happens all the time. If you give people the capability to have a YTD budget so you can see your over under that would resolve the yearly and the quarterly requests.

Typically you figure out how much you are going to spend for the year, say end of year property tax payments or quarterly payments. You divide by 12 and enter that as a monthly #. Each month you accrue the budget amount minus any credits or debits. This will show you year to date how you are doing on that budget item.

Here are things we do:
1) Save money for taxes at the end of the year
2) Budget 50/month for repairs, assuming one repair a year. The account will start out positive accruing budget, we incur the expense and go negative, then we make it back up for the rest of the year
3) Savings - I have a budget category for savings. Savings never gets spent so it just builds up. This gives me the buffer to go negative on other accounts
4) On a monthly basis I want to ability to change the allocations for a specific month. I may have my standard budget and then move $ around as we go over. That way we can take money from another part of the budget.

5) There are complexities with transferring money especially to old credit cards with balances. Payments for new charges on credit cards should be tracked as transfers. Payments for old charges that are not in the mint system should be done as payments

[exquicken]

I agree; but if I had to select one over the other, I would really enjoy the ability to add a 'quarterly budget'... there are certain bills (as mentioned) that only occur on a quarterly basis and therefore, the only way to 'sort-of' track them in mint is break the qty down to a monthly number and have 2 months be under and 1 month be way over.

To define $$ budget for YY period of time would be great.

This works fine in a monthly budget if you can accumulate the excess, then when the expense hits you might go negative

[darkestvdragon]

I'm glad it's not just me! I don't mean to be overly picky, but this is actually starting to affect my happiness with Mint. It's a good tool for keeping track of my net worth vs. debt and stuff, but I feel I had a better picture of where my money was going overall with the Excel spreadsheet I made.

[qploans]

hello friends,budgets are really helpful in maintaining our household and personal expenses.

[exquicken]

I'm glad it's not just me! I don't mean to be overly picky, but this is actually starting to affect my happiness with Mint. It's a good tool for keeping track of my net worth vs. debt and stuff, but I feel I had a better picture of where my money was going overall with the Excel spreadsheet I made.

Im planning to do it by hand. I have set my monthly budget in mint. For categories that I underspend in, in the next month Im adding that extra amount to the category for the next month. For categories that I have "overspent" in, Ill reduce next month by that amount. For categories that are overspent by multiple months Ill do the best I can to keep track.

The only reason why Im maintaining in mint instead of quicken is so that my wife can get email alerts when she overspends. The extra added manual piece is annoying, but it will work.