It is time to do a check up of my financial month so that I can see where I stand. I have been using a rolling budget since the beginning of the year and I need to do periodical checks to see if I am on the right track financially.

The rolling budget is very simple to set up and use. I created a zero based budget in Mint where every dollar is accounted for in some way. I have spending categories set up for things like Gas and Food and there is a Miscellaneous category set up as well. That category will take care of things that do not come up on a regular basis but are still some type of spending that will affect my monthly budget. If I have something that does not fit neatly into one of my preset spending areas it goes under Miscellaneous and that way my zero based budget will always balance out.

The rolling part of the budget occurs where any extra money that is not spent in one month gets rolled over to the starting balance for the following month. If I overspent in one area that also rolls over to the next month and that category is reduced by the amount that I went over the month before.

So far I am in good shape with regards to the rolling budget. I came in under every category for the month of March, except for Education. This was to be expected because I budgeted a monthly amount of $100 for education spending and I spent way more than that in January when tuition was due. Since I do not spend on education every month the allocation of $100 will roll over and will take that negative balance down to (hopefully) zero by the end of the year, or at least closer to a more reasonable number.