Hey Everyone
Hope you had a good weekend?
I am in the process of organising my finances and I was wondering how you all use Emma to set budgets?
It might seem stupid but how do you decide on setting a food budget for example? Do you change this each month if you want to cut down on certain things?
I tend to spend a large amount on clothes a couple of times per year rather than each month, what do you think the best way to account for this is?
Any tips would be much appreciated!
Thanks
I just follow the average we provide and adjust.
Eating out, Transport, Groceries and Entertainment are pretty much predictable over time.
@grant.m do you set budgets?
Pub, gambling, eating out and entertainment.
Gambling. 
For the added convience off knowing exactly how much I spend each month and not having to remember to buy it each month, I am a huge fan of subscription services. I subscribe to everything from skin care products, razors, underwear, clothes, shampoo and conditoner and more. As these prices rearly changes, I get a better overview of my monthly spend.
I subscribe to Dollar Shave Club for shave cream, hand cream, lipbalm and deodorant. Harry’s for razor and razor blades and MeUndies for underwear. The links are referral links.
Subscription underwear! Who knew?
What are you using to bounce your affiliate links?
I’m having a custom domain running Wordpress and have installed a ‘Pretty Link’ plugin.
I can’t understand why you’d need subscription undies? They’re not consumables like the others things.
I’d love to see some kind of zero based budget implementation similar to YNAB or Budgetwise. It’s the best way to budget.
It’s true…
Wow that’s so wasteful, I’m surprised that’s a recommendation!
Can you explain how this works please luke?
Nothing to do with his underwear range.
You budget with the money you currently have and allocate it all out until you are left with zero money. You take into account annual expenditure and monthly expenditure. YNAB have near enough perfected the model but there are other contenders that are coming out of the woodwork like Budgetwise.io. You should check them out.
What’s the difference with the left to spend we have in the app? 
It’s different. I would suggest experiencing it and having a look at the webinars that they have to truly understand the method.
Starting with the average is a good start, but one thing that is missing is seeing in that same view the transactions in that category. I can have a large average due to a large one-time purchase, or a lower one because for example I was on vacation and didn’t spend as much in a particular one.
Fintonic, which is the finance tracking and budgeting app that has worked best for me by a long shot, does this and it was extremely helpful.
Here they show you the expenses in a category for a given month
Note: the actual expense amounts don’t make sense because I moved from Spain (where Fintonic is based) to the US in January.
Left to spend doesnt exactly work the same way. In Emma you just set a total you want to spend, along with individual budgets or spending targets per category. However there’s no easy to see feedback in Emma to show how much of your total available you’re budgeting (e.g. If I’ve budgeted £300 for shopping it should reduce my ‘available to budget’ figure by that amount).
With YNAB you’re allocating all income down to zero each pay day. This means by overspending in one category you’re forced to reallocate money from your remaining funds in another category.
If Emma could implement a similar feature it’d be much more useful.
I hope you are hey can as I have a similar issue I paid a premium amount for what I thought was a robust budgeting app. I love Emma and feel the budgeting could be improved. I want to be able to budget to zero and see if I over budget currently I can’t see that and I also would like to be forced to reallocate money I have budgeted for if I overspend. Let’s hope this feature is added soon.
