(above).Troubleshoot Budget Planner problems
Tip: For easier reading, click (above).
Play Money 99's Budgeting Philosophy video.
Play the Creating a Budget video.
My Monthly Summary says "Your expenses exceed your income." What should I do now?
The Monthly Summary doesn't include occasional income and expenses, so those amounts may account for the difference.
The Monthly Summary shows an average monthly amount. If certain income or expense amounts end before year-end (you'll see an asterisk next to the line item), your budget may be a little high one month and a little low the next.
Make sure you have accurately indicated amounts in the Monthly column for each of these places.
My Monthly Summary says I have money left over. What should I do now?
Click Save it in my Occasional Expense Fund to make it available for occasional expenses. It will be reflected in the Occasional Expend Fund amount in the Yearly Summary.
Click Spend the money to remove this amount from your budget. It won't be reflected in the Yearly Summary.
My Yearly Summary says, "Your expenses exceed your income." What should I do now?
If your monthly budget balances, your occasional expenses exceed your occasional income.
Be sure that you've clicked Save it in my Occasional Expense Fund to make any excess funds from your Monthly Summary available for occasional expenses.
Make sure you have accurately indicated your amounts shown in the Occasional column for each of these places.
My Yearly Summary says I have money left over. What should I do now?
Adjust your budget to save that amount of money. Add that amount to either your long-term savings or Occasional Expense Fund. See Add a long-term savings contribution to my budget and Add a contribution to my Occasional Expense Fund.
My Yearly Summary balances, but not my Monthly Summary. Why?
This is probably because the Monthly Summary does not include occasional income and expense amounts; only monthly amounts. Occasional amounts are included in the Yearly Summary.
Also, if certain income or expense amounts end before year-end (you'll see an asterisk next to the line item), your budget may be a little high one month and a little low the next.
I've scheduled certain bills but they're missing from my budget. Why?
Bills that were scheduled to be paid before today and bills scheduled to start after 12 months from now are not included in the budget.
A recurring bill is showing up as an occasional amount. Why?
Any recurring monthly bill that begins 60 or more days from today is reported as an occasional expense because it occurs in 10 or fewer months during the next 12 months.
My 401(k) contributions aren't showing up in savings and my expenses seem too high. What can I do?
It sounds like you've set up your 401(k) contributions to go to an expense category rather than to a separate 401(k) account. In this case, your contributions will appear as expenses in your budget, rather than as savings.
If you track deductions from your paycheck, check the deduction for your 401(k) plan (see Schedule my paycheck deposit for details):
If the latter is true, create a retirement account for your 401(k) plan and track your contributions there instead to fix the problems with your budget. See Create a retirement account.
Why don't I see a certain account in my budget? I see it elsewhere in Money.
Accounts that you've marked as excluded are not shown in the budget. In the Group Your Accounts dialog box, assign a purpose to the account other than Exclude from budget. For more information, see Organize accounts in your budget.
By default, Money expects you to assign deposits only to income categories. You're asked if you want to correct the category information when you try to assign it to an expense category. Click No.
What should I do about numbers shown in the Budget Status place?
Some unexpected amounts have appeared in my budget. Where did they come from?
Amounts in All Other Expenses, All Other Income, Additional contributions to Long-Term Savings, and/or Additional contributions to Occasional Expense Fund Savings lines were set after upgrading your Money 98 budget to Money 99. When the top-level amounts from Money 98 don't match the details for income, expenses, long-term savings, or short-term savings, Money 99 sets the All Other amount to preserve the top-level budget of Money 98.
Review these amounts, and edit them as appropriate.
I imported more than one budget from Quicken. How do I see the others?
The budget with the most recent time stamp (that is, the one you viewed most recently) from Quicken is the one you are able to view. Your other budgets are archived for viewing.
How do make a certain Quicken budget my default budget?
First, save your budget in Quicken so that it has the most recent time stamp of all your Quicken budgets. Then open it in Money.