Setting goals though a Budget is a great way to adjust your spending by giving you an incentive each month to save extra money.  The BudgetTracker site comes with the ability to setup your goals either by account, or by budget category. Your goals can be accessed from the Accounts page, Budget page, or the Navigation menu.

  • By Account – When setting up a goal by account, you are basically saying that when the account reaches a certain dollar amount in transactions, the goal has been completed. From the My Accounts page, you’ll notice next to any Checking or Savings accounts the ability to create a goal. Once created, you’ll see how far away your account is from reaching the goal as well as the name of your goal underneath the account that goal is tied to.
  • By Budget Category – The other way to track your goals is by Budget Category. From the My Budget page, click the “Go To…” dropdown and choose Goals. From the goals page, you can enter in the name of your category, how much you plan to allocate each month towards your goal, and how much your goal is. At the bottom, check off “Or Tie to Budget Category” instead of account. This will create a new budget item for you to keep track of each month. As you add money to the budget category, you can navigate to the Goals page to see how much is left until reaching your goal.

Also note that if your goal is to payoff a credit card, this is built into the My Bills page already without having to create a goal. When creating a new bill, if you enter a total amount due, you’ll notice a small calculator that will take you to the paydown schedule showing you how many payments until your credit card or loan is paid off.