Spending from a budget

[blakdogg]

Hi,
Does any one the proper procedure for spending from a quarterly budget?

If you have an item with a $90 quarterly budget, Mint accounts for $30 each month. But when you make the $90 purchase, Mint claims you have spent $120 for the month.

Does anyone know how this is supposed to work? What steps are needed to account for the item properly?
Thansk

[bdavis]

I'm trying to set up a budget for Christmas 2009. I was thinking it would be a 1 time budget and it would be due in Dec 2009. To test it out I set the budget as $500. Mint is budgeting $250 for this month ($500 divided by 2 months). However, as soon as I set up the budget and labeled a transaction as "Christmas 2009" it says I "exceeded accrual budget."

It seems like it should be subtracting from the budget and telling me how much I have left to spend instead of adding the amount and saying I'm over budget. I also tried the "every so many months budgeting" and set it at 12 months with the first one due in Dec 2009. I had a similar result. I was over budget with the first transaction assigned to "Christmas Gifts."

Am I setting this up wrong or is this just not an available feature in Mint?

[chris.horney]

I would suggest just using a monthly budget item with the rollover feature checked. This makes you do a little bit of math (90 dollars every quarter would be 30 every month, etc.) but as long as it rolled over, you should be good when the time comes to spend the money. The one time budget and the quarterly budgets don't work very well, but using the rollover seemms to do the best for most circumstances. Even a one time a year payment can be used this way, although depending on the time you have this purchase, you may go over your "budget".

For example, you donate 600 dollars a year in a one time payment to a charity in January, but clearly you haven't accumulated the money for this 600. If you had budget 50 a month with roll over, it will go over the first month, but be zeroed out the remaining 11 months and still account for it in the budget. This isn't ideal, but it still allows you to accurately forecast cost and keep a budget that aligns your spending with your income.

[janie_super@yahoo.com]

i cant get rollover budgets to work, so what i do is, i deposit my money into my savings and then pay the bill or myself every month.

[mburdsall]

I've given up trying to use the rollover and one-time features on the budget. It is a nice idea but i do not think Mint has thought this our properly.