Goals

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.

Category funding priorities

Every category has a funding priority that stays the same across months. Lower numbers fund first, regardless of the category's position or group. The default choices are 1 Highest, 2 High, 3 Normal, 4 Low, and 5 Lowest. Existing and new categories start at 3 — Normal.

Change a priority in Edit Category, directly in the category row menu, or in the budgeting side panel after selecting categories. Multiple selections show their shared priority or Mixed; applying a value changes the selection together and can be undone in one step. In numeric mode, enter the number and press Apply priority. Categories without goals can keep a priority, but Fund Goals only assigns money to eligible goals.

Under Settings → Budgeting → Goal funding, each budget can choose:

• Priority choices: five levels, or any positive whole number. Switching back to five levels converts priorities above 5 to 5. The setting and conversion undo together; switching to numeric mode preserves values.
• Sharing within a priority: proportional shortfalls (the default), or equal completion percentage.
• Show priority badges: enabled by default. Non-default priorities appear as P1, P2, etc. beside category names on desktop and mobile. Hiding badges does not affect funding.

These settings are saved with the budget and sync across devices.

How limited money is shared

Fund Goals fully covers each priority tier before moving to the next. When money runs out within a tier:

• Proportional shortfalls covers the same fraction of each category's remaining need.
• Equal completion percentage helps the least-funded categories catch up toward a common percentage of this month's requirement, without taking away existing assignments. Existing deficits are included in that progress. If a tier contains a goal with a nonpositive monthly requirement, it uses proportional shortfalls instead.

For two equally prioritized €100 monthly requirements, already funded at €80 and €0, with €60 available:

| Sharing method | Added to the first / second category | Final completion | | --------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ---------------- | | Proportional shortfalls | €10 / €50 | 90% / 50% | | Equal completion percentage | €0 / €60 | 80% / 60% |

Yearly, repeating, and target-date goals still use their existing monthly milestones. Equal completion measures progress toward that month's requirement, not cumulative savings. Allocation uses exact milliunits; rounding ties use category IDs, so dragging categories or groups does not affect funding.

With Allow over-assignment disabled, funding uses at most positive Ready to Assign. When enabled, it covers the full eligible shortfall, even if Ready to Assign becomes negative. The Assign menu and budgeting side panel use the same rules; selecting categories in the panel limits funding to that selection, while no selection includes the whole budget. Each funding action saves as one batch with one-step undo.

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.