How do I set up my budget for specific dates? We get paid on the 1st and 15th. If I choose bi weekly my annual amounts are off bc instead of it landing on the 1st and 15th it lands on 1st, 15th, 29th
I was going to just do a month long budget and just add money to the envelopes on the 1st and the 15th but then for the first half of the month it will constantly look like Iām over budget. Annoying and discouraging.
There has to be a way to set it up for a certain period. So many ppl get paid on the 1st and 15th.
Iāve been working at our new budget all day and just ran into this discouraging problem.
Welcome to Goodbudget!
The app is designed to plan your spending based on a spending vs. an income schedule. Youāll budget the money you already have, and as you receive new income, it will go into the pool of funds for the following budget period. Ideally, youāll build up a one-month cushion so that you can fill all your envelopes at once at the beginning of the month, but if youāre not at that point yet, then yes, you could just fill your envelopes as you get paid until you have enough set aside to budget a month at a time. You can use Due Dates to help streamline this process in the meantime, which can show you which envelopes have priority when you do a Fill.
Another user made a work-around by creating an āexpected incomeā dummy account, and he budgets from that pool then transfers the money to his true working account when he gets paid. That will make your envelopes look better but you have to be diligent about not overspending money you donāt yet have.
You could also do a weekly or bi-weekly budget if you have just that much buffer, but I think most people are using (or working up to) monthly because so many bills fall on that schedule.
Finally, if the envelope view is the most important feature, then you could create envelopes for the āfirst halfā and āsecond halfā if you need to budget that way. Theyād then be aligned to your pay schedule.
This is exactly why I created my Projected Income account.
I am paid biweekly, my wife is paid semimonthly. We set up our budget monthly because the main expenses are monthly.
On the first day of the month I record a single Income into Projected Income account for the total of all our paychecks for the month. I fill all our monthly envelopes from this income. When a payday arrives, I transfer the paycheck amount from Projected Income to Checking. At the end of the month I zero out the Projected Income account and the monthly envelopes.
When I import the bank transaction file, the direct deposits into Checking match the account transfers I did from Projected Income. Itās simple, clean, and my envelope balances donāt look wrong just because itās the start of the month.
For new users who may be struggling to stay within a budget, how do you assure that youāre not spending money that hasnāt come in yet? That would be my biggest worry about filling envelopes with expected income. I have an adequate buffer so I let envelopes go red all the time (lol, donāt @ me!) but if I were budgeting closer to my real day-to-day balances Iām afraid Iād be overdrawn in a hurry. I suppose this would be a case where the user is working in both Accounts and Envelopes on the regular, although usually I think itās better to just fill with what you have on hand and you can mostly just ignore the Accounts side until itās time to reconcile.
In the early days when budgeting was new to us I had to be hyper focused on accurate accounting. I religiously entered every receipt either immediately or at least nightly. I was keeping an eye on the account balance probably more than the envelope balance.
Probably the most important advice from those days is to avoid any automatic payments. You want 100% control (or as close as possible) of when money leaves your account. I would take every bill and schedule it to be paid on the payday that made the most sense prior to the due date. Usually this meant the mortgage was paid on the last payday of the month while the other utilities were paid on the other payday. This balanced the fixed expenses between paydays and left us with a fairly consistent flow for everything else. The point is that I controlled when the payments happened.
The other part of āstruggling to stay within a budgetā is to stop spending everywhere you can, especially if you are in debt. No cable tv or streaming services. Basic cell phone plans. No fast food, no restaurants, no Starbucks runs. Plan your meals, shop the grocery ads, and clip coupons.
When you are struggling to stay in budget, you must be absolutely deliberate about all spending. You cannot just go āshoppingā for fun. You cannot just swipe a card and worry about paying it later. You must know when you leave the house how much money you have available to spend and you must discipline yourself not to spend more than that. Cash can help
Hi @Jennifer_K Iām not sure if Iām misunderstanding you, but GB does have Semi-Monthly Budget Period, that gives you the option to select the 1st and 15th as your start dates. Your Annual Envelopes (without Due Dates) would have budgeted that are equal to 1/24 of your Annual Amount ā so the equivalent of starting of the 1st and 15th every month for 12 months.
Thank you weāre hoping to eventually be able to have enough set aside. I was just hoping there was an easy and practical solution for the dates. I have too much on my plate rn to run two accounts. Not enough in me for a learning curve.
That sounds exactly what Iām looking for thank you so much! Iāll take a look at it. Hopefully my tired brain understands the process lol.
I really appreciate the help!
This is incredibly helpful and wise advice. Thank you so much! We just PCSed overseas and it put us in debt by thousands
Trying to get out of a hole now. Iām very grateful for this app and how you have so much more control with it.
I have very few automatic charges. Thank goodness. Itās hard though when it comes to streaming. We canāt afford to go out so we stay in. We need at least some basic entertainment. I think we only pay for one at the moment, not including the Amazon membership that gives prime.
Looking at it and Iām a little confused.
My budgeted amount when itās set to monthly is correct ($1,933) Then when I switch things to semi monthly with the dates set to 1st and 15th the semi monthly budget is different ($1,651).
I looked at the annual amounts and they halved themselves correctly. Why would this happen?
Also, what happens to the budget on the 15th? Do the amounts reset? Bc I would like the amounts from the 1st to roll over.
The envelopes do not āresetā automatically. GB is like an accounting ledger. The current balance of each account and every envelope is the sum of all previous transactions. Itās not like some budget apps where each period is an isolated unit.
Itās just like stuffing cash into physical envelopes. The envelopes donāt ādoā anything, they just organize your cash into categories.
Totally understand about the entertainment. I actually have a separate annual envelope just for Amazon Prime subscription. Ours renews mid-September, so I have the due date set to 9/1 and every month set aside a small amount so when September comes itās not a significant hit to my Miscellaneous envelope.
how funny! I was JUST talking to my husband about our Amazon Prime membership cost and realizing I donāt have an envelope for it. I think the part that Iām still confused on is the annual amounts. Do you just let that money accumulate in your checking account over the year and know that as long as you donāt go over budget in GB that amount will accumulate enough over the year to be paid? Iām also trying to keep my GB account free. I just have so many little envelopes it can be difficult for a family of 4.
Yes, an annual envelope is just a holding place that accumulates money over time. If you create an annual envelope and give it a due date, GB will calculate during a fill how much you āshouldā allocate to that envelope each month so that it is full by the due date.
Iāve been a paid member for many years now so I donāt know what the current price is, but itās been worth it to me to have the flexibility of multiple accounts and envelopes. I used to have several dozen envelopes but have more recently consolidated and eliminated many of them. I use an Excel spreadsheet to list out all of my expenses and calculate totals which I then translate to GB envelopes. E.g. I have a table in Excel that itemizes all my monthly subscriptions: Gym memberships, Netflix, Pandora Plus, etc and I have one monthly envelope in GB named āSubscriptionsā that I set to the total of that excel table. I used to have separate envelopes for each subscription and it was nice in some ways but just adds to the overhead of managing the app.
Oh I LOVE that idea! Makes it more simple in the app. I wish I could figure out how to simplify my categories. Maybe Iāll put them into Chat GPT and see what comes out lol.
Thatās SUPER cool on setting due dates for the annual. I had no idea that was an option. With some of the annual Iāve had to use them in place of monthly bc I ran out of monthly envelopes. The membership is $10 a month and thatās just WAY too expensive for us right now. Iām gonna reach out and see if they do military discounts.
weāre hoping to eventually be able to have enough set aside. I was just hoping there was an easy and practical solution for the dates. I have too much on my plate rn to run two accounts. Not enough in me for a learning curve.
