Troubleshoot the Advanced Budget

Creating a budget is the easy part; sticking to it is often more difficult. There are several ways you can adjust your budget if you spend more in a category than you originally planned.

Note: The steps in this task depend on whether you're using the Essential Budget, the Advanced Budget, or the Savings and Spending Budget. To find out which budget you're using, look for the Essential Budget, Advanced Budget, or Savings and Spending Budget label in the upper-right corner of the Budget summary page.

With an Advanced Budget, you can:

Edit the amount you have budgeted for expenses.
Increase the budgeted amount for a category in which you have overspent, and decrease the budgeted amount in another category to compensate. To learn more, see the related topics below.
Reallocate funds from a different budget period or category.
Reallocating is like borrowing from yourself. You take money from the same category in next month's budget, or from a different category this month, to cover an expense in the current month. To learn more, see the related topics below.
Add a one-time income item to your budget.
For example, add that overtime pay you worked hard for or the tax refund you just received. To learn more, see the related topics below.

Notes

When you first create a budget, it may not show the spending limits you set for some recurring bills during the first month. For example, if you paid rent on May 1 and you set up your budget on May 15, your current month's budget won't show a spending limit for rent in May, but will show one in June. If your budget doesn't look balanced the first month, wait until next month to see if the problem goes away on its own.
When you delete a bill that you paid in previous months, you will still see the old bill as an item in your budget because Money tracks your past spending habits as well as what you're likely to spend in the future.