Completely Lost

This is my 3rd week and I am manually filling my envelopes with amounts I want to spend this week (I do this every week) and I am ending up with some of my envelopes with a red bar. Bills I scheduled to pay I put in transactions and the bar is red when I budgeted for it. So confused. My unallocated is showing -1936.90 and I do not know where to go from here. I feel like scrapping the whole thing and trying to start over but I think I am missing some crucial point to understand.

Also, my husband is an awful spender. he acknowledges we need to save money and then he is spending every time I turn around. The first week was good but now I cannot keep up with his spending although I do enter everything after I find out about it. I really want this to work at least to show him what is happening.

Welcome to Goodbudget!
There are a couple of things to ask in order to help:
1–Are you working with a monthly or a weekly budget?
2–When you schedule future bills, do you click the “Schedule This” box so they don’t show up in your ledger too early?
3–Regardless of how much you over- or underspend, the Unallocated envelope should reflect the amount of money you haven’t ASSIGNED to envelopes, and if it’s negative, you’ve put more in your envelopes than you actually have.
The red bar also means you’ve spent more from an envelope than you’ve entered, but not necessarily that you’re over your budget. For example, if you budget $40 for entertainment and plan to enter $20 in week 2 and $20 in week 4, but then spend $30 in week 3, you will be within your budget (less than $40) but have spent more than you put aside (because the second $20 hasn’t been put in yet). That will show as a -$10, in red, until you correct it by adding money from somewhere else.
Remember that Goodbudget treats money as if it were real, hard cash in real envelopes. You can’t put in money that you haven’t earned yet, and you have to space out your expenses to go along with your income.
I THINK, since you said you add money every week, you’ll want to have weekly envelopes for the things that vary throughout the month but you may also want monthly envelopes for the things that get paid every month regardless, like rent/mortgage. IMHO, the easiest way to get back on track is to first make sure all your transactions and account balances are caught up. Then put all your money into the Unallocated envelope. That should equal the amount in your bank account, and it’s the amount you have today. Next, figure out which bills you HAVE to pay for the rest of the month–do you have a car payment, utility bills, etc. that are due before May 1? If so, fill those envelopes from Unallocated with the amount owed so you’ll have enough when the due date comes.
Now you’re left with the amount of money available to spread out over your other envelopes. Obviously, fill the “needs” envelopes first (gas, groceries, etc.) then use any leftover for savings, and then “wants”. You can fill these with just enough to get by until your next Fill next week, then add more when you get more income.
You’ll also notice that the green bars have a tic mark indicating where you should be if you were to spend the money in that envelope evenly through the month. That’s great for expenses that come up often but it doesn’t work so well for things like rent that get paid just once and empty the envelope all at one time. Still, it might help you have the discussion with your husband about staying on track throughout the month. Money is a really hard topic when you’re not on the same page! Are you able to set alerts so you’ll know as soon as money is spent? That way if he forgets to input it into the budget you could double check at the end of the day/week to make sure it’s all caught up. Alternately, I use the apps on my phone for my bank and credit cards to check every few days and make sure no transactions were overlooked.
I really wish you luck!! Please feel free to clarify your current process and ask more questions–there are a lot of us on the forums who have been using Goodbudget for a while and are more than happy to help if we can. :slight_smile:

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“You can’t put in money that you haven’t earned yet”

:wink:

lol

Also, my husband is an awful spender. he acknowledges we need to save money and then he is spending every time I turn around. The first week was good but now I cannot keep up with his spending although I do enter everything after I find out about it. I really want this to work at least to show him what is happening.

Budgeting is not just accounting. As Dave Ramsey says, “adults make a plan and stick to it, children do what feels good.”

Is your husband participating in the planning part of budgeting? Without participating up front this is just an accounting exercise for you and nagging or shaming for him.

Is he agreeing to abide by the budget you have created together? If there’s not agreement before the period starts then it’s just wishful thinking with no accountability.

If he is helping you make a plan and agreeing to abide by it and then does whatever feels good anyways, he is being dishonest and you’re dealing with other issues that cannot be solved by yourself or a budgeting app. There’s either a maturity problem or an addiction problem and you’ll need counseling to address that.

Well that escalated quickly!
While I do agree that both parties need to be on the same page, budgeting (and sticking to a budget) are good habits that have to be learned. Just like flossing daily or working out, it can take time to get good at managing money when there’s a shift in culture—like going from being spendy to learning to spend mindfully.
Do keep those lines of communication open, but also be reasonable and gentle with yourselves when there are slips as long as you’re both trying to keep doing better.
A budget isn’t a “set it and forget it” plan either; it needs to be reviewed and tweaked regularly to be sure it’s still meeting your needs.
Best of luck!

I’m not escalating, I’m getting to the root of the problem. Sometimes it’s just a new skill to learn and habit to develop. Sometimes it’s a serious behavioral issue that needs to be addressed. If someone says “ya, I know I need to quit drinking” but then goes to happy hour every day after work, there’s a problem there that can’t be solved by someone keeping a tally of how many drinks they’ve had.