Tutorial to help you start budgeting with Toshl and explore some most common uses of budgets. The surest way towards becoming a enlightened budgeting genius.

So you want to save some money or keep a closer eye on how much you’re spending. Setting up a budget is the easiest way to do it.

Tap the + button (top right) or shake the phone when in the Budgets tab.

There’s a couple of different ways to budget, depending on what you need. Let’s take a look at some common examples:

Budget for all expenses – monthly

Set up the maximum amount you wish to spend during the month. Hopefully that number is lower than your incomes. That’s important because it turns out that private citizens can run budget deficits for a much shorter time than governments can. It’s thus pretty wise to keep a bit of a surplus and save for the rainy days.

This budget will now track all your expenses within the month and warn you with some flaming red hues when things go overboard.

Budget for specific tags – weekly coffee

That caffeine habit is tough to kick, especially in the mornings when that extra energy boost is like mana from heaven. Now you can at least get a sense of proportion and try to limit your coffee spending by setting up some early warning signs. If you track coffee spending with its own tag you can set up a budget just for coffee and try to shake less when holding that cup.

Some Toshl users found strength to quit smoking by setting up a cigarettes budget. But it’s not just for vice, feel free to budget for any type of tag you wish to keep a closer eye on.

Travel budget – one time

Holidays can be a time to be a bit more relaxed with money, but it’s good to have a warning system in place when it’s getting tight. You know, just so you don’t end up on the streets of Yangon selling yourself just to earn that airplane ticket back home. True story! Not really.

Anyway, go traveling, set up a one time budget for all expenses with the start and end date of your vacations and you’ll know exactly how much you spent on the trip.

These are just a few examples of the budget combinations you can use, there’s a lot more powerful options suited to your needs. You can combine any type of budget with a time period.

Budget types:

– all expenses

– for specific tags

– except specific tags

Budget time periods:

– one time

– daily

– weekly

– bi-weekly

– monthly

– yearly

Budgets with rollovers

One more thing to get you on your merry budgeting way. Your budget doesn’t have to reset each week or month. You can turn on the rollovers by selection the option “Move remaining to next budget”. That way if you’ve been especially good in saving on restaurants last month you can move those remaining funds to the next month and treat yourself to some proper nine-course dining with fine Slovenian wine at Skaručna. Suit yourself, but that’s what I’d do.