notriddle
Finally figured out what exactly is happening when funding envelopes with a smaller salary
I've reported this problem before, but wasn't able to figure out the exact behavior of Budget With Envelopes.
When funding my envelopes with a smaller salary than the total of my envelopes' required funding, Budget With Envelopes shorts the funding of some envelopes, but until now, I as not able to predict which ones would be shorted.
Today I funded my envelopes again, and after experiencing this problem for the third time, I figured out that Budget With Envelopes under-funds the first envelopes in the alphabetized list that require any funding.
Simplified Details:
My first 4 envelopes in Budget With Envelopes are:
"BugCard" with a monthly funding requirement of $0 "CarR" with a monthly funding requirement of $7.00 "Dental" with a monthly funding requirement of $6.50 "DogLic" with a monthly funding requirement of $1.00.
My full monthly envelope funding requirement for my entire budget in Budget With Envelopes is $724, but I again entered $710 as my salary, due to my one odd quarterly income.
My "BugCard" envelope (since it has no monthly funding requirement) was correctly funded with $0.
My "CarR" envelope was funded with $0 instead of it's $7 requirement.
My "Dental" envelope was funded with $0.50 instead of it's $6.50 requirement.
My DogLic" envelope was funded with $0 instead of it's $1 requirement.
All other envelopes were funded correctly.
Notice that the total reduced funding was indeed $14, and that it was spread over the first envelopes (alphabetically) that required any monthly funding.
Again, why I face this problem each month:
My budget envelopes are always underfunded by $14 each month from my monthly salary because I have one odd income of $42 that comes in quarterly, so that amount is stored in a holding envelope each quarter so it can cover the $14 monthly funding shortage through the rest of the quarter.
Since the fully funded difference is currently being spread over a number of envelopes in an undesirable manner, I suggest that Budget With Envelopes allow the user to specify a "sweep" envelope. The fully funded difference could then be predictably swept into that "sweep" envelope (whether the difference is positive or negative) so all regular envelopes will still be fully funded in a predictable and logical manner.
If you have any further questions about this, please don't hesitate to let me know. I hope that the problem can now be fixed sometime soon since the problem is now well defined, well documented, and should be able to be reliably duplicated.
Sincerely,
John Vander Stel Grand Rapids, MIchigan
