 <p>Please consider the following <em>"test guide"</em> more as comment than an answer, because it just contains some <code>console.log</code> statements instead of an actual answer for your problem.</p> <p>Anyway below are some issues I'd try to checkout:</p> <ol> <li>do you receive an answer from the server following <code>query.find</code> </li> <li>check is data fetched (inner query) from the server</li> <li>check if category data is received successfully following fetch query </li> <li>check if element with category id is found</li> <li>error handling added for fetch and query </li> </ol> <p>Also I noticed that you are using <a href="http://api.jquery.com/text/" rel="nofollow">.text()</a> method for setting the value. I think it'll work fine as long as the element in question is not a form input element. If that's the case, you probably have to you use <a href="http://api.jquery.com/val/" rel="nofollow">.val()</a> method.</p> <p>The <code>console.log</code> test print outs that I added can be found at this <a href="http://jsfiddle.net/jyrkim/usdgvx85/1/" rel="nofollow">Fiddle</a> for <code>updateBudgets()</code> function. (Fiddle updated) I hope this helps :-)</p>