How to Use Quicken for a Home Budget
Whether the economy is good or bad, knowing where your money is going is important. That is where a budget comes in, and Quicken will allow you to create a budget quickly and easily. It is also very easy to modify the budget as your income and needs change, as well as to create simple but useful reports to show you how you are doing.
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Instructions
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1
Collect pay stubs, canceled checks, bank statements and bills for the last six months to a year. The more information you have, the better. Based on this, make a list of what you are spending on major categories such as groceries, utilities, rent or mortgage, etc., as well as your income. You are now ready to begin building the budget.
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2
Open Quicken and click on the “Planning” menu and then “Budget.” Under the Setup tab, click on “Manual” and then “Create Budget.” Give your budget a name.
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3
Click on the “Choose Categories” button under the “Income” and “Expenses” tabs, and select from the predefined list of major categories. Don’t try to get too complex at this time. Most of your spending will fall into a handful of these categories. Use miscellaneous as a catchall for anything that doesn’t fall into a major category.
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4
Click on each category under both tabs and enter the amounts you calculated in Step 1 in the “Amount” box on the right. Use an average on items that vary from month to month. When you have completed the items, look at the totals at the bottom. This shows you the difference in income and expenses. Hopefully, the difference is a positive number. If this number isn’t something you are comfortable with, go back in and adjust some of your expense numbers.
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5
Run a budget report once a month to gauge your progress and where you need to make changes. Quicken has a prebuilt budget report under the “Reports” menu and the “Spending” submenu. It will show you month by month how your actual spending matched up to your budget.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have been using Quicken for a while, creating your initial budget is much easier. In the dialog box where you first clicked on “Budget” select “Automatic,” and Quicken will create a budget based on the income you have posted and the bills you have paid over a period of time. You can still modify these amounts as needed. This eliminates the first three steps.
Don’t try to balance this budget to the penny. Things happen and you need a cushion for the unexpected. This is a tool to help you see where your money is going and where you are overspending in any given period.
