So I guess one method would be to set spending-limits when you setup your account. But that'd lead to constant moments of having to bump your budget (or worse,

So I guess one method would be to set spending-limits when you setup your account. But that'd lead to constant moments of having to bump your budget (or worse, get approval to do so from Accounting) when you're trying to work. There are both spending limits and alerting that you could use, but would be impossible to predetermine from Azure's perspective, so they rightly ask you to.