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The three budgeting situations people hit most: Ready to Assign went negative, a category is overspent, and a credit card’s Payment category is red. Each has a clean fix.

Ready to Assign is negative

A negative Ready to Assign means you assigned more money than you actually have. The number is telling you to take some back.
1

Find a category with extra

Look for categories with a positive Available balance that you do not need this month.
2

Pull money back toward Ready to Assign

Reduce the assigned amount on those categories. Each dollar you un-assign returns to Ready to Assign.
3

Stop at $0

Keep going until Ready to Assign reads $0. That is a balanced, fully assigned month.
Ready to Assign also goes negative if income you expected did not arrive. If a paycheck is late, you genuinely have less to assign — reduce categories to match what you actually hold. See Ready to Assign.

A category is overspent

When a category’s Available goes red, you spent more than you assigned to it. Cover it by moving money in from a category that came in under.
1

Open the overspent category

The red Available shows how much it is short.
2

Move money in to cover it

Move the shortfall from a category with extra. The overspent category returns to $0 and the source drops by the same amount.
See Cover overspending for the full walkthrough.

A credit card Payment category is red

Credit cards work differently from cash categories, so a red Payment category usually is not a mistake — it is the budget telling you that some of what you charged was not funded. Here is the model: when you assign money to a credit-card spending category and then spend on the card, that money moves into the card’s Payment category, where it is “safe to pay.” If you spend on the card without having assigned money to the spending category first, there is nothing to move, so the Payment category comes up short and shows red.
1

Read the red Payment amount

It is the part of your card balance you have not yet set aside money to pay.
2

Assign money to the Payment category

Move dollars from Ready to Assign, or from a spending category that came in under, into the card’s Payment category until the red clears.
See Payment category is red and How credit cards work for the full picture.

Still stuck

If the numbers still do not add up after balancing, reach us over in-app chat.

Cover overspending

Bring a red category back to zero.

How credit cards work

The funded-portion model explained.