Tips to prevent stealing from the future

Hello, I’ve been trying out YNAB for the past couple weeks now that Mint is going away. I’m trying to embrace the rules, but I’m struggling with rule #4 in practice.

I’ve been living off last month’s income for many years, but I feel like the way I budgeted in Mint, as well as my home grown spreadsheet, help make it clear when I’m over spending for the month, or even just how much extra savings I generated that month.

When budgeting against what I plan to make (not the YNAB way), it is very clear when you are going over. For example, in Mint, right on your budget page it tells you in green or red of you’ve under or over budgeted. I have similar clear signs in my spreadsheet.

I’ve started funding categories for next month, but I got to thinking, what happens when I go over in some category this month? I had a couple hundred dollars extra from last month’s pay that didn’t need to go to this month’s categories, so those are into next month. Normally if I end up needing some extra money in clothing, for example, I would know that I have that extra money I can add to that budget. I can still do that of course, but as I move it from next month back into this month, it isn’t obvious to me if that was money that was extra from last month, or is it money from this month’s paychecks that I should be reserved for next month.

I feel like I could probably do some math to figure it out, but having my budget just turn red and show me I over allocated for the month was effortless and obvious. I want to embrace the YNAB method, so is there some good equivalent for seeing this? I’d love to see some clear signal that what I’ve assigned for the month is over what I had at the beginning of the month. Maybe because this is my first month, so I’ve assigned lots of extra money, it is making it hard to figure this out.