Our Favorite Budget App for Cheer Moms: Part 4, Categories & Goals

Now that we have category groups, let’s get specific! We’re going to add individual categories within each group for your specific cheer expenses and set goals. YNAB’s goal-setting feature helps you plan for both recurring and one-time expenses, making it easier to stay on track with your budget. You can be as detailed or broad as you prefer. Don't stress about remembering every single expense as you create your categories for the first time. YNAB makes it incredibly easy to adjust as you go.

Why Goals Matter:

Goals allow you to plan for expenses before they come up and avoid scrambling for funds at the last minute. They also help you keep bigger, less frequent expenses in your line of sight (I'm looking at you, uniforms). Over time, targets help give you a sense of the true cost of cheerleading throughout the year. I have found it very useful to smooth out how much I'm setting aside for cheer every month even though the actual spending may vary dramatically from one month to the next.

1. Under Mandatory Fees, add categories like “Tuition,” and “Competition Registration Fees,” "Choreography," "Evaluation Fee," and anything else that you have to pay for your child to join a team at your gym.
2. For Competitions, create categories that cover your spending during competition weekends. This can include travel (hotel, flights, rental cars, and taxis--whatever is most relevant to your season), food, gas, and souvenirs/gifts. 
3. In Apparel & Accessories, you'll add “Uniforms,” “Shoes,” "Practice wear," "Backpack," and "Makeup/hair." Even if you don't need to buy a new uniform every season, you WILL need to buy a new uniform eventually. You can set aside a little bit every month so when the time comes, you'll have a pile of money ready and waiting.
4. Finally, in Everything Else, think about “Team Bonding Events” or “Team Gifts.” My personal favorite is my ‘stuff I forgot to budget for’ category, because if you’re like me, you WILL forget something (or several things). 

Creating Goals for Each Category

Now that you've created your categories, you can set up goals for each category. Having goals in YNAB makes it super easy to assign the right amount of money to each category in just a few moments. Your goals can be as large or small as you need, whether it's $2000/year for gym tuition or $2/week for post-practice snacks from the vending machine.

YNAB allows you to create two different types of goals:

1. Set aside another $X every week/month/year: Great for regular expenses like monthly or annual fees. Enter the amount of money you need to spend and how often you need to spend it. This is a good choice for most of your expenses. 
2. Refill up to $X: This type of target will set a maximum amount that you want to set aside each month. If there's money left over at the end of the month, YNAB will prompt you to add however much you need to get to that maximum amount. This might work well for 'gas to drive to comps' or 'gym snacks.'

Conclusion:
Categories and goals help bring clarity to the true cost of cheerleading throughout the year. With categories and goals in place, your budget has clear targets for monthly, yearly, and irregular expenses. Next up, we will start assigning the money we have set aside for cheer into these categories!

-Lexie

PS: Ready to take control of your cheer expenses? Try YNAB free and test out this proactive budgeting method yourself. Use our referral link to start your free month—no strings attached—and make your cheer budget work for you.