You should also check to be sure you are including all of your spending categories. When you review a budget, check to see how your actual spending reflects your budgeting. At minimum, you should review your budget at the end of each month.

Best practice is to look at you budget weekly or even daily to see how you are progressing. To make the best use of your budget, you should review it regularly.

Just because spending is discretionary does not mean it is bad, but if you are having budget shortfalls or just want to save more money, discretionary spending is a good area to focus on. Food & Dining can also count as discretionary, because while you need to spend some money on food, the amount you budget is up to you. The money you spend on Entertainment is discretionary, for example. In other words, money that you can avoid spending and still have a functioning household or business. These are areas where you will need to think about what you what you want to spend.ĭiscretionary spending is defined as non-essential spending. Many categories are discretionary, such as Restaurants, Entertainment, and Personal Care. Other bills, such as Utilities, may be relatively steady, but still have some fluctuation from month to month. For example, your Auto Insurance, Student Loan, Rent, or Mortgage may not fluctuate from month to month. For example, if your goal is to spend less money eating at restaurants, you might choose to lower the budget for Restaurants, but also raise the budget for Groceries. You might adjust amounts based on your current spending, or pick a goal amount to either decrease or increase the amount of money you put toward an individual category. You will want to go through all of the spending categories. This is one reason why it is important to always assign categories to your transactions. If you have never used a category, Quicken will not add it to your budget. Quicken selects your budget categories based on the categories you have previously assigned to transactions. If you are trying to reduce your spending, then you’ll want to look for categories where you can lower the amount allocated. When Quicken generates a budget, it is based on your actual spending. You can increase or decrease amounts, and you can add or remove categories. Once Quicken for the Mac has generated the initial budget, your can make adjustments. The application will choose your categories and your spending amounts. Quicken for the Mac analyzes your current spending and income, then generates a budget. Other dates are possible, and if you are new to Quicken, you should check to see how back your transactions go so you don’t start your budget before you have any transactions. Even if you are several months into the year, this allows Quicken to set a baseline budget by looking at your past spending, and allows you to compare your current spending with your previous spending that year. In most cases you will want to start at the beginning of the year. When you create a budget in Quicken for the Mac, you can decide what date you want to start your budget at.

Quicken for mac 2017 budgets