		OVERVIEW INSTRUCTIONS

Use the BUDGET screen to develop a retirement budget.  (Although this may be used prior to retirement, the companion program (Money Jars) is better suited for this purpose.)

First develop your budget by:

 1. Developing your list of budget categories.
 2. Entering a target budget, and budget period, for each category.
 3. Checking to see that the budget total does not exceed your maximum allowable monthly expenditure, as calculated on the Resources screen.

After developing your budget, then

 1. Distribute your existing bank account total to your various accounts, according to your best guess as to their current needs.
 2. Adjust the balance total to be the same as your bank account total by adjusting individual items.

Making deposits:

 1.  The total for a normal budget deposit would normally be distributed to all of your budget categories (in accordance with the ratio of the category budget to the total budget.)
 2.  As an exception, you might allocate a deposit to to only one or more categories.

Making withdrawals (expenses):

Any expense may be all allocated to a single category, or split among several categories.  (An example would be a single payment of a credit card bill covering items in several different categories.)

Adjustments:

The program rounds deposit entry amounts when automatically allocating to all categories in accordance with their budget ratio.

Accordingly, you may need to occaisionally adjust one or more category balances.  

END