I make small daily deposits ($5) to reload my Amazon account in order to fulfill one of the requirements for a high interest rate in my checking account. It requires at least 10 debit card transactions per month, which I don’t normally make. But I do make regular purchases from Amazon, so I just have an auto payment set up to add $5 a day to my Amazon account from one of our high interest checking accounts and $5 a day into my husband’s Amazon account from the 2nd high interest checking account.
What is the best way to handle these? The money comes out of the checking account and goes to Amazon. It may or may not be spent right away (I tend to use it quickly, my husband holds it for a larger purchase). It isn’t spent on the same category of purchase - it might be gifts, personal, household, etc.
I’m sure there’s an evident answer but I’m struggling with it and it is cluttering up my sheet. Thank you.
i think i’d categorize it as a transfer. but then you’d need to be vigilant when you actually bought something to ensure that transaction got categorized correctly.
OR
My Amazon purchases always carry a category of Amazon initially. Then I run the Amazon importer. And it gives me the option to properly categorize both spending and refunds.
If you did this, then you make all your deposits carry the category of Amazon and then sort out the real spending when you uploaded the CSV from Amazon.
Thanks for brainstorming. I wasn’t aware of the Amazon importer, so that will help in many ways. I’ll take a look at it this afternoon.
Bear with me since I’m just getting started - I’m not so worried about balancing my bank statement. I’m more interested in how those funds are used, so it may be more efficient to just delete those daily transfers as they come in and pretend like they aren’t happening and then just capture and categorize those expenses as they actually come in. Trying to capture a $72.43 purchase from Amazon and go back and categorize it in $5 increments sounds like a nightmare.
I need to read a little about how sinking funds might be handled and see if that sparks something.
(I know it seems like a lot of work but the interest amounts to about $100+ a month so I hate to give it up easily and honestly, trying to find 10 ways to use a debit card for each account every month always ended up in a race to midnight on the last night of the month)
I hear you! $100 a month is worth some extra effort for sure. And your Amazon solution seems pretty smart to me.
I’m not sure I’d delete. Maybe give them their own category that you can then treat like an account. And then when your $72.43 purchase lands, you can ‘pay’ it with funds from the Bank of DebitAmazon.
I’m now just spitballing . Probably their are sound accounting rules for just such a thing and, hopefully, someone will pop in with a great solution.
p.s.DO check out the importer. It was difficult for me to grasp what it was doing when I first started but finally I got it and now I’d be totally lost without it.
Thanks again - as I’m looking into the Savings Budget, I think that might actually be the answer. I’ll just “fund” that budget and have a category for Amazon (perhaps breaking it down into categories within that as needed) so even though the money won’t technically be in my account, it will still appear as available and then I can just direct the expenses for the things purchased to the correct “Amazon” category.
I’m really not trying to track every dollar - it’s more of a slow prep to retirement so that when we go to a financial advisor and they ask what our spending is each month, I can easily reference it with a little bit of historical accuracy.
That’s probably my answer for our remodeling budget as well. I have a large amount of money that is earmarked for a whole house renovation, so I need to show it as a starting budget for any renovation so that those funds don’t look like they are coming out of income every month (because with the cost of building materials, I assure you, we will look like we are upside down by thousands every single month!)
Yes, I believe that the Savings Budget add on is going to be a more familiar way of budgeting and carrying over funds for me.
This is not a Tiller solution, but I had an account with similar ‘restrictions’ on it, and I was able to meet them by transferring via ACH to another account, and then I just did a lump sum transfer back.
Possibly you could also debit card into venmo/cashapp/paypal? Worth a shot, and you could probably automate it.