Build your first budget

Do this after your bank has sent your transactions, not before. A budget here starts from what really happened in your last few months. You don’t fill in a blank grid from memory. A budget is not a cage. It’s you deciding, on purpose, where the money in your care should go, before the month decides for you.

The month, and its plan

Budget opens on the month’s plan. At the top, a pie shows where your planned income goes. Giving comes first, then Bills & essentials, Everyday spending, Saving and Debt. Money you haven’t planned yet is Unbudgeted, drawn as an empty slice. A key beside the pie gives each part’s amount.

Next to the pie are the plan’s figures:

• Planned income: what you expect to bring in this month.
• Planned out: everything you’ve planned to give, spend, save and pay.
• Unbudgeted: planned income you haven’t given a job yet.
• Projected month-end: what you’d have left if every budget is spent in full. Each paycheck still expected counts as in. Each category counts at its budget, or at what it has spent if that’s more. It matches Unbudgeted until a category goes over or money goes out that nothing was budgeted for. Once the month is over, it’s simply how the month ended.

How the month is going is on Home’s budget card. Its Budget Health is a score out of 10. It loses a point for each issue. An issue is a category over or headed over, a late paycheck, or a debt payment that isn’t scheduled. Each part of the plan also says On pace, Watch, Off track or Over. Watch never costs a point.

Under the pie are your categories, in three groups: Giving, Bills & essentials and Everyday spending. Each line shows what it has spent, what’s still scheduled, its budget, and what’s left. You can change the budget right there. A line shows a flag only when it needs a look:

• Watch: it’s spending faster than the month is going.
• Off track: what’s spent plus what’s still scheduled will go past its budget.
• Over: it has already gone past its budget.

Press a category’s name to see the transactions behind it. Each section’s header shows its step: Done, with Reopen beside it, or Current step. That way you can see how far along the month is.

You make the plan on this one page, in four steps, in order:

• Income: what you expect to come in, and what has come in so far.
• Spending: every category’s budget. This is the heart of the month.
• Saving: what each of your goals gets this month.
• Debt: the minimum payments, plus any extra you’ve planned.

The four steps all show the same numbers, so they can’t disagree. Every budget is a field. It saves when you press Enter or move to the next one, and you get an Undo in case you didn’t mean it. Esc puts a line back before it saves. When a step looks right, press Done on it. The last one finishes the month, so next month can start from it. Nothing else finishes a month. Changing a line never does.

Start on Spending

Your first budget comes already filled in. The amounts come from your repeating payments on Recurring Series and your last three months of spending. Fixing a suggestion is much faster than making one up, and it’s far more likely to hold up once the month starts.

Every month after that starts from the one before. Open a new month and press Copy ‹last month›’s budget (for example, Copy April’s budget). Then change the lines that changed.

Budget a sub-category

Every category opens. Press the arrow beside it to see its sub-categories. A category’s budget is its own budget. It covers the category itself and every sub-category that doesn’t have a budget of its own.

You can give a sub-category its own budget, in its row or in its detail. That money comes out of the category’s own budget, so the total stays the same. If the own budget has less than you set, the category’s total grows by the difference. The message after you save tells you which one happened. To undo it, a sub-category’s Remove its own budget gives the money back. A category’s Combine into one budget puts every sub-category back under the category.

Money for things that aren’t monthly

Car insurance, a holiday, the vet. Put those on Savings Goals and set aside a little each month. Then the bill is boring when it comes, not a crisis.

Check a number you don’t believe

Pick any category to see the transactions behind it. No number here asks you to just trust it. See Checking a number you do not believe.

Your first budget won’t be perfect, and that’s fine. It’s one month, looked after honestly, and that’s where stewardship starts. “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” (Luke 16:10, WEB). Set the plan, let it meet the month, and adjust.