I have been using Mint for budgeting, but it is no longer working for me. I love Excel and spreadsheets, but before I get Tiller, I need to know if it is possible to create an “everything else” group for budgeting purposes, but have the transactions categorized underneath the correct group.
Some of my categories, like kids clothing, furniture, dinner party, etc. do not need a budget, as they don’t happen monthly. But in order to save X amount of money, I need to designate a certain amount to spend on this everything else budget. Let’s say $1,000.
If I buy kids clothes that month and spend $100, I want the transaction to appear in the Everything Else category, so it takes away from the overall everything else budget (showing $900 left in the everything else budget). Yet, I still want it grouped under “kids,” not for the budget but for the snapshot of how much money is being spent where.
At the end of each month and each year, I want to see I spent X on all kids’ purchases. But for budgeting sake, that purchase appeared under everything else just on the budget page.
I have been using a “Tags” column inserted right after the “Category” column on the “Transactions” sheet to do what you are looking for. Here is a link that explains more:
Scroll to near the bottom to find the “Tags” column discussion.
You can add any tag names you want such as your kids clothing, furniture, dinner party, etc. You can then filter on the Tags column to select any given tag’s transactions to display. In the article link above it also provides a further link to the “Tags Report” that you can add to your sheet that will provide additional reporting for you.
hi, i’m in a similar position and i don’t think tagging would work, because what if the tag is for something that would need an actual budget category in the future? ex. in june i pay for a day pass to the gym. in january i start a gym membership that requires a monthly budget. one (the june transaction) would be tagged, the other (transactions from january on) would be categorized. but i still want to see how much i spend on the gym all in one place, which won’t work if one is categorized “everything else” and the other is “gym.”
i suspect that this mint-like “everything else” budget is kind of antithetical to how tiller’s “categories” sheet is set up, where every category asks for a number every month. is there some way around this (a custom made budget page?) that could circumvent the zero-based budgeting of the current categories sheet?
