Life changes and so does your personal budget. You might change jobs or bring home a new member of the family, or you might simply pay off a car or refinance your home.

This simple guide to changing your personal budget over time can help you navigate those financial changes and reach your goals with confidence.

Every budget changes over time

For dedicated budgeters, changing your personal budget can feel like a real challenge. For one thing, you work hard to stay within your budget every month. Changing it can feel like cheating—even if you have good reason to switch things up.

But the longer you put off changing your budget, the harder it is to do. Small changes in your finances stack up over time. Eventually, instead of changing one or two things, it feels like you’re starting over from scratch.

Instead of letting those fluctuations build, create a plan to re-evaluate your budget over time, at regular intervals, and expect your personal budget template to change, whether you’re keeping that budget in a modern app or on paper.

By keeping your personal budget categories up to date, you’ll keep your financial goals on track, which is the primary purpose of any complete budget.

Here are four tips for keeping your budget up to date as your financial needs change.

Tip 1. Create a proactive schedule

Creating a schedule to evaluate your budget on a regular basis is a great way to stop reacting to change and start planning for it instead. Your budget won’t always need to change, but you’ll be prepared when it does.

It’s also a great way to take control of your financial goals. Checking in regularly helps you adapt to budgeting changes while keeping your eyes on the big picture and keeping those goals on track.

Finally, if you’ve combined your finances with a spouse, partner, or other family member, regular check-ins provide the perfect structure for keeping those channels of communication open.

Monthly check-ins

Check in at the end of each month to review how you did on your budget last month and evaluate the month ahead.

If your spending went over budget, a monthly check-in gives you a chance to find out why. Is there a new bill you need to account for as you move forward? Or was it a one-time expense you can easily make up for later?

If your spending came in under budget, you can decide how to use that windfall: let it roll over to the next month as a cushion, use it to pay down debt, add it to your savings, or do some of each.

Your monthly check-in is also a good time to make sure your personal budget data is up to date. Have you entered every transaction? Do your balances match what you’re seeing online?

In a budgeting app, this might only take a few clicks. If you’re keeping your budget on paper or in a spreadsheet, take the time to make sure everything adds up. You can’t check in with your budget if your records are out of date.

Once your data is caught up, make sure your spending looks right in each category. If a category seems much higher or lower than you expected, your monthly budget review is the perfect time to look into it.

Quarterly check-ins

At the end of each quarter, take these 4 extra steps to evaluate how your finances might be changing over time.

  1. Review spending trends. Review your spending over the last 3 months, taking special note of any developing trends. Are any of your categories consistently rising or falling? If so, this is a good time to figure out why and adjust your budget for the next quarter.
  2. Review your balances. Is the average balance of your primary bank account rising? Consider putting more money toward your savings next quarter. Is the average balance of your credit card rising? Find a way to start paying that debt back down.
  3. Review your subscriptions. This is also a good time to review your transactions for subscriptions you might have stopped using. The average household spends a lot more on subscriptions than most people realize. Checking your list each quarter can put a lot of money back in your pocket.
  4. Review your savings & investments. Pay special attention at the end of each quarter to your emergency fund, your retirement plan, and any other investments and savings goals you’re building over time. If you had to draw on your savings for unexpected expenses, that’s okay. Build a plan into your budget to rebuild so you’ll be ready if and when you need them again.

Annual check-ins

At the end of the year, add these final 5 steps to make sure you’re making the most of your personal budget for the coming year.

  1. Review your net worth. Tracking your net worth helps you take control of your finances by understanding your trends and evaluating the overall health of your spending and saving patterns.
  2. Review your taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, but your tax return is an important tool in planning for the coming year. Use your return to evaluate any changes you want to make to enhance your savings.
  3. Review your insurance coverage. Did you sell a car during the year? Or buy a rental property? Have your family’s financial needs increased enough to warrant a larger insurance policy? Or have they decreased enough for a smaller one? Review your insurance policies at year-end to see if anything needs to be updated.
  4. Review your beneficiaries and estate plan. As you review your insurance coverage, remember to consider your beneficiaries to see if you need to make any changes. This is also a good time to review your will, medical directives, and the rest of your estate plan.
  5. Set your financial goals for the coming year. This process should include upcoming events like vacations, weddings, and graduations as well as long-term financial planning. For larger goals, consider setting target milestones as benchmarks for your progress through the year.

Tip 2. Account for both temporary and permanent changes

Throughout all your budget check-ins, pay attention to whether changes are temporary or permanent and how well things are balancing out.

If you often have a small cushion at the end of the month, and then you go over one month because you bought a new set of tires, that’s not the kind of fluctuation that requires a major budget overhaul.

On the other hand, a new job, or even starting to work remotely, will probably warrant some adjustments to your personal monthly budget as you move forward.

Most importantly, by keeping up with your budget every month, quarter, and year, you’ll identify new trends quickly, letting you react with small adjustments throughout the year instead of getting too far off track and having to start from scratch.

Tip 3. Use calculators

As you evaluate your budget for potential changes, it can be a challenge to figure out how to make it all work. When you increase one budget category, you’ll need to decrease your budget somewhere else.

Reviewing your budget regularly makes this easier, but even two or three important changes can feel overwhelming as you try to redistribute the rest. And significant life events like a move or a new job can add up to a lot of changes at once.

Modern personal finance software and apps make the process easier with tools that can crunch the numbers for you, letting you raise and lower different amounts easily while you experiment.

If you aren’t using an app, consider using a budget calculator when you want to make changes to your budget. These online tools help you structure your budget by providing places to enter the most common personal budget categories, such as housing, transportation, education, personal items, and savings.

A good budget calculator will break these down for you into subcategories, with places to enter your own unique needs.

Although a budget calculator can’t fully replace a personal budgeting app, it’s still a useful way to experiment with redistributing your funds and determine which changes to your budget make the most sense.

Tip 4. Be sure to choose a budgeting system that can meet your needs

When you first get started with budgeting, you might keep your budget on paper or in a personal budget spreadsheet. That isn’t a bad way to start, but as your finances grow, they tend to become more sophisticated.

In fact, they should get more sophisticated.

As your finances grow and become more complex—adding things like retirement accounts, investments, or a mortgage—it becomes more important to track key performance indicators and think about your long-term income opportunities.

A budgeting app like Quicken Simplifi can help you track your finances in just a few minutes a week. If you’re used to a relatively uncomplicated budgeting system, an app that’s easy to use can help you feel more comfortable as you transition to a more flexible, comprehensive system.

On the other hand, if you’re used to a line-by-line budgeting system with different amounts for each category, software like Quicken Classic lets you work the same way, changing your budget easily whenever you want to.

Quicken plans also let you upgrade easily as your finances continue to grow.

For example, Quicken Classic Premier gives you more sophisticated ways to track your investments while Quicken Classic Business & Personal is perfect for managing investment properties or any other small business venture.

The important thing is to choose an app or software that can grow with you, letting you change your budget easily as your financial needs progress throughout your life.