Is there a good way to categorize when funds are swept from your primary checking account into a savings account? Same question for when credit card bills are paid.
We’ve already itemized the individual charges but aren’t sure what to do when the funds are swept from our checking account and paid to the credit card company.
Would welcome any thoughts on this one!
The way I handle both of these things are like transfers.
For a move from checking to savings, this is just an account transfer ( I have a category called account transfer with the Type set to Transfer). This way it wont coutn any budget or anything, its just money going from one to pocket to another.
For Credit cards i have a category called Credit Card Payment. this is also set to Transfer. I then mark both sides of the payment as credit card payment. Once again it is just liek a transfer. The actual tracking of expenses is done with the individual purchases ( Groceries, Clothing, Gas)
Hope that makes sense.
Just to add to what richl said, there is a difference in what type of CC payment it is. If it’s a card that is paid up in full every month, then I use “transfer” as my category for money going in and out.
If it’s a debt, that I need to pay down, then I have two items in my categories sheet.
One item is the name of the credit card and it’s a debt expense. The other item is “Debt Payoff Received” and it’s a hidden income category. This way, when the money goes out, it’s budgeted to a specific card (you can also just use “Debt Payoff” if you don’t want to budget for each debt/card.) Then when the money hits my debt account, I use “Debt Payoff Received.” The debt is not marked as transfer because I want it on my monthly budget so I can see how much debt payments I have for the month. (You can then also make use of several debt templates in the lab and on here.)