Goals
Use Budgero goals to stay accountable to future spending. Dial in amounts and timelines that match the way you save, and let the app compute what to assign.
In this guide
- The four goal types and when each one fits.
- How Budgero computes "needed this month" for every type.
- What the status colors mean and how to fund all goals in one click.
A goal turns a category from a bucket into a plan. Instead of remembering that the €1,200 insurance bill lands in January, you tell the category once — and from then on Budgero computes what to assign each month and shows you, at a glance, whether you're on track.
The four goal types
Goals come in two flavors — spending goals (keep an amount available) and savings goals (accumulate toward a number) — with two types each:
| Type | What you set | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly spending | Amount available each month | Groceries, fuel, eating out |
| Yearly spending | Amount available across the year | Clothing, gifts, hobbies with lumpy timing |
| Monthly savings | Amount to put away every month | Open-ended saving: emergency fund, investing buffer |
| Target date savings | Total amount + deadline | Vacation in August, insurance due January, new laptop |
Choosing between them comes down to one question: is the number about this month or about a destination? Recurring life is a spending goal; future events are savings goals.
How "needed this month" is computed
Each type calculates differently — and the differences are deliberate:
- Monthly spending wants a full tank at the start of each month. Needed = target − what's effectively available. Spending during the month doesn't count against your progress; only assignment matters. Leftover rolls into next month, so a quiet month means you assign less the next.
- Yearly spending spreads the target across the period (a year by default, or whatever cadence you set for a repeating goal) and checks you against the pro-rata pace, so a big purchase in March doesn't show as failure — it shows as spending the plan.
- Monthly savings is the simplest: needed = monthly target − assigned this month. Activity is irrelevant; this goal is purely about the habit of putting money in.
- Target date divides what's still missing by the months remaining. Fall behind in March and April's required amount rises automatically — the deadline doesn't move, so the monthly ask does.
Repeating goals
Two kinds of goal repeat, and they're set up differently because they answer different questions.
Yearly goals (Yearly spending / Target date savings) are about a specific date: car registration on March 31st, the holiday in August. Pick the target date, and switch Repeats to Every year if the same thing comes around annually — the next cycle starts automatically the month after the target date, ending on the same date a year later.
Periodic goals (Periodic Allocation Target / Periodic Available Target) are about a rhythm rather than a date: a quarterly tax instalment, insurance every six months, a subscription billed every four months. You choose the cadence — Quarter, 6 months, or any N months (2–120) — and a start date (today by default). The first cycle starts in the start month and runs for the cadence length; the target date is derived for you (the last day of that cycle) and every following cycle simply continues the rhythm.
How the cycles behave:
- The goal amount is per cycle: a quarterly goal of €300 asks for €300 every quarter, spread evenly across the months of that quarter — creating a quarterly goal today asks for a third of it this month, not the whole amount.
- The editor shows the current cycle and its target date while you set the goal up, using the exact same maths as the goal card.
- Available targets carry the balance across cycles — money you didn't spend last quarter still counts. Allocation targets count only what you assign inside the current cycle, so each cycle starts from zero.
- Cycle end dates keep the day of the month, clamped in shorter months (an anchor on the 31st gives Apr 30, Jun 30, and so on).
Reading goal status
Every goal carries a status that drives its progress bar and color:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On track / Ahead (green) | Funded to plan, or better |
| Behind (yellow) | Partially funded — catch up before month end |
| At risk (red) | Far behind plan; the target needs attention or revision |
| Completed (green) | Target met |
| Overfunded (green) | Noticeably past the target — money that could work elsewhere |
| Overspent (red) | The category itself is negative — fix the overspending first |
Funding goals without the spreadsheet
You can always assign to goal categories by hand, but two quick actions in the Assign menu do the arithmetic for you:
- Fund Goals assigns Ready to Assign across all underfunded goals in one step — the closest thing to a "do the right thing" button in Budgero.
- Reduce Overfunding pulls back assignments that have drifted past their targets, returning the excess to Ready to Assign for redeployment.
A common monthly rhythm: income arrives → Fund Goals → distribute what's left to flexible categories by hand. Five minutes, done.
When a goal stops fitting
Goals are statements of intent, not contracts. If a target-date goal keeps showing red, you have exactly three honest options: assign more, move the date, or shrink the target. All three are better than ignoring a red bar until it becomes background noise — a budget you've stopped believing stops working.
Editing or removing a goal never touches the money already in the category; it only changes what Budgero asks of you going forward.