This is a series of budgeting strategies that I've developed or learned about to help with [[Finance|Financial]] planning. ## Flexible Capped Category Group This strategy helps with overspending in a broad area. Imagine you have a problem with excess spending on 'fun' things. You can set a cap on the amount of fun money by only budgeting a certain amount across all fun things. For example, if I get `$500` of fun money a month, then at the beginning of the month, I put `$500` in an envelope. I take from this envelope during the month for any categories I want to spend on. If I run out, I run out. This is in contrast to just budgeting a certain amount per category. It forces you to prioritize. This works in the case of saving as well, because you can stage a certain amount of money to save, and then 'spend' it on certain saving goals. In [[YNAB]] this can be accomplished by totaling up the assigned in the category group to a certain amount. # References