Having trouble with budgeting

I've used Microsoft Money since the 2000 release but only recently tried to
start maintaining a tight budget and use Money to help. One issue I've run
into is that the budget is setup for monthly like most normal people budget
but many of my bills (auto/home insurance, retirement, a loan, etc.) come
automatically out of my paycheck every two weeks. I've never found a way to
setup a budget any differently than to total these payments for a year and
average them over 12 months. Of course, depending on when a pay period ends,
some months I appear to be under budget and others I'm over, though I'm
usually right on track for the year. This can make it very misleading and
hard to do budget tracking in Microsoft Money 2007 or, I'm assuming, any
version.

Has anyone else out there ever experienced problems like this? Does anyone
have any work-arounds or advice?

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom anyone might have to offer.

Sincerely,
- Byron Followell

Byron,
I think that problem you have called out is right there. You have
taken a monthly average, while truly your payments are every two
weeks.

So from a budget stand point, why do you not setup the payments to
be every 15 days. That way you will be able better represent the costs
and your variations in a month will be lot less limited.

cheers

SP

On Aug 13, 4:50 pm, Byron Followell
<ByronFollow...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I've used Microsoft Money since the 2000 release but only recently tried to
> start maintaining a tight budget and use Money to help. One issue I've run
> into is that the budget is setup for monthly like most normal people budget
> but many of my bills (auto/home insurance, retirement, a loan, etc.) come
> automatically out of my paycheck every two weeks. I've never found a way to
> setup a budget any differently than to total these payments for a year and
> average them over 12 months. Of course, depending on when a pay period ends,
> some months I appear to be under budget and others I'm over, though I'm
> usually right on track for the year. This can make it very misleading and
> hard to do budget tracking in Microsoft Money 2007 or, I'm assuming, any
> version.
>
> Has anyone else out there ever experienced problems like this? Does anyone
> have any work-arounds or advice?
>
> Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom anyone might have to offer.
>
> Sincerely,
> - Byron Followell

SP,

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, that's my problem. I see no way to do
what you suggest. All of my bills are already setup the way I pay them,
bi-weekly, monthly, etc. If you're talking about setting them up that way in
the budget, I see no way to do that. The only options I see are to change the
amount for a category. From there, I can set the amount planned for each
month or set different amounts for various months.

I think I may have setup the wrong type of budget initially and I may need
to go back and start another one. I've been using the Savings and Spending
Budget. I'm thinking I should be using the Advanced Budget to get to what I
need. Does that sound right to you?

Thanks again for trying to steer me in the right direction.

Sincerely,
- Byron


"sp" wrote:

> Byron,
> I think that problem you have called out is right there. You have
> taken a monthly average, while truly your payments are every two
> weeks.
>
> So from a budget stand point, why do you not setup the payments to
> be every 15 days. That way you will be able better represent the costs
> and your variations in a month will be lot less limited.
>
> cheers
>
> SP
>
> On Aug 13, 4:50 pm, Byron Followell
> <ByronFollow...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> > I've used Microsoft Money since the 2000 release but only recently tried to
> > start maintaining a tight budget and use Money to help. One issue I've run
> > into is that the budget is setup for monthly like most normal people budget
> > but many of my bills (auto/home insurance, retirement, a loan, etc.) come
> > automatically out of my paycheck every two weeks. I've never found a way to
> > setup a budget any differently than to total these payments for a year and
> > average them over 12 months. Of course, depending on when a pay period ends,
> > some months I appear to be under budget and others I'm over, though I'm
> > usually right on track for the year. This can make it very misleading and
> > hard to do budget tracking in Microsoft Money 2007 or, I'm assuming, any
> > version.
> >
> > Has anyone else out there ever experienced problems like this? Does anyone
> > have any work-arounds or advice?
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom anyone might have to offer.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > - Byron Followell
>
>
>