In Microsoft Money, one way to take some of the tedium out of setting budget goals is to click the Autobudget link in the Enter Your Income window and the Enter Your Expenses window. An Autobudget is a bit like the 1040EZ tax form: It does the job as long as your finances are not particularly complicated and you don't have a lot of categories to budget for.

When you click the Autobudget link, you see the Autobudget dialog box. The dialog box analyzes your past spending and lists the amounts that it thinks you should spend in most of your categories. Autobudget doesn't work, however, if you haven't entered at least a month's worth of transactions.

To enter new budget goals quickly, get the numbers from the Autobodget dialog box. To do that, click the Clear All button, select the check box next to each category and subcategory that you want to enter in your budget, and then click OK. The numbers from the Autobudget dialog box are transferred to the Enter Your Income and the Enter Your Expenses windows.