Create a budget

If this is your first budget:

1. Click on the Budgets tab on the feature bar.
2. You will see a Getting Started view that briefly introduces some budgeting features. You can click through these images by clicking the arrow buttons. When you’re ready, click Start Budgeting.
   
3. Next, Quicken will scan your existing transactions to automatically create a default budget based on your past income and expense history. The rules for what shows in your budget are:
   • Transactions from the last 12 months are scanned (older transactions are ignored).
   • Any categories that were used in the last 12 months are included by default (you can change this later).
   • The actual income/expense values from the past 12 months become your default budget values for the 12 months included in the budget (you can change these values at any time).
     Examples:
     • If you had a single transaction for $75 each month in a category called “Phone Bill”, Quicken sets a $75 budget for this category for each month.
     • If you had a $1,000 transaction categorized as “Property Tax” in April of last year and a $1,200 transaction categorized as “Property Tax” in September of last year, Quicken sets a $1,000 budget for Property Tax for April, a $1,200 budget for Property Tax in September and a $0 budget for Property tax for all other months.
     • If you have an expense category like “Shopping” that varies greatly from month-to-month, the default values you see in your budget for “Shopping” are the actual values for transactions categorized as “Shopping” in the previous year—and thus will vary from month-to-month
4. After Quicken completes the analysis (this could take a little time for large data files), you will see your default budget based on your historical spending patterns.

Please Note: This is just a tool to get you started.

After the initial budget is generated, we strongly recommend you spend some time reviewing the budget and adjusting the values and categories to fit your particular situation. For example:

• Remove historical spending (or income) categories that are no longer relevant.
• Adjust budgets in areas where you want to reduce spending.
• Remove unnecessary detail by budgeting just top-level categories.
• Make a plan for a reduction in spending over time.
• Add categories or budget items for upcoming life events which are not reflected in the previous year.
• Adjust or remove budget items for periodic spending events that may differ in the coming year—such as travel or vacations.

In short, the goal of this initial budget creation is to kick start your budgeting and goal setting process by providing information and details on what happened in the past. You will need to spend some time thinking about your own goals and your specific financial situation to create a budget appropriate for you.

We suggest that you revisit your budget at least monthly to see how you are progressing towards your goals and to make adjustments where needed.