First, I need to say that I’m a big Tiller fan after only a few months of use. The default template plus the community templates for retirement planning have me feeling more confident about my money than ever. I love that I can get into the details and explore rather than just relying on some PDF from a bank or advisor.
Now that I’ve got my own financial life fine-tuned in Tiller, I’d like to add my domestic partner, so that we can plan together. (She’s invested in Monarch since Mint died, and is wary of doing another thing.)
I’m sure I can connect her accounts, add her budget categories, and begin planning, but I also like the idea of seeing just “my stuff” and “her stuff”, so that’s what I’m trying to figure out. My best idea is to toggle the “hide” fields on the accounts and categories tabs, maybe even making a quick script to switch from one person, the other person, and both.
I think that should work, and even impact the Cash Flow Forecast and Retirement Planner sheets.
Hi, I have worked extensively to bring my partner’s finances into tiller and feel successful with how I’ve accomplished it. I have set it up to handle the two people thoroughly, IMO. There is data/analysis for me, my partner, joint, my partner+their portion of joint, me + my portion of joint.
Let me look at it today and redact info/etc so I can share the full workbooks (there’s 2 of them). I’ll share some screenshots first (today) to give you a better sense for what I’ve created.
Kyle
Link to my sanitized, cleaned up worksheets that show how this works. The chart workbook can probably be copied as is, but your base tiller workbook needs to be modified to add in the 4 columns that specify the portion of the expense that each person is responsible for. The chart workbook uses the “importrange” function to bring in the transactions and categories from your base tiller workbook.
Below are some screenshots of the inputs/outputs I’ve set up.
Here are a few brief explanatory notes:
Disclaimers:
There are some imperfections in this workflow/spreadsheet.
This “sanitized” version of the spreadsheet has AJ/KJ inputs that aren’t matched up properly with the transaction on the row. That had to be done manually be me when sanitizing and I couldn’t get it to match up row by row for some reason.
Naming conventions:
J = Joint, A = Ashleigh, K = Kyle, AJ = Ashleigh portion of joint expenses, KJ = Kyle portion of joint expenses
Transaction inputs:
If purchase is made on joint card/account, no input is required in the AJ/KJ/A/K columns (right side of screenshot). This is set up like this because we each pay 50% of the joint card purchases. If that was not 50%, additional formulations could be added to correctly attribute the right percentage to “AJ” and “KJ”. It may be able to be done by inputting the
If purchase is made on a personal credit card and is a joint purchase, but one person is paying for it all or part of it, then you would input the amount that each person is responsible for. We use splitwise to input this information as well, so that we know how much we owe each other for situations like this. My goal is to be able to take this information from Tiller, but I’m not there yet.
Any money moving between my personal accounts, my wife’s personal accounts, and our joint accounts are all considered transfers (“T in” and “T out” categories).
As you can see, there is an input for percentages (A%, K%). I used to have formulas in each of these 4 cells for every row. They were formulas that referenced each other as a circular reference, so that if the user inputs a number in any of the 4 cells, the $ cells are populated automatically. For example, if I want to input 40% into K%, and it’s a $100 expense, $40 will show up in the KJ$ cell and $60 will show up in the AJ$ cell. These $ cells are the cells used in the output charts.
Below are example outputs of the data (table, bar chart, and pie chart).
Use examples:
I will look at “K” actuals to see what my personal (non-joint) expenses are.
Ii will look at “J” (joint) actuals to see what our overall joint expenses are.
I will manually add K and ½*J to understand what my theoretical financial spending projections would be if I paid for ½ of all joint expenses, plus my own.
I will look at K+KJ to understand what I actually paid for, personal and my portion of joint expenses.
Thanks, Heather. It’s been a work in progress for awhile. There are still bugs and things I’m trying to work out, and it would be great to vet and format fully to perhaps submit as a community solution.
I’ve recently started to work on a solution for Google Sheets that will grant the ability to add and track budgets for multiple people! It’s a “Subcategories” workflow that allows you to add one or more subcategories to each category, much like @jpfieber’s Budget Plan.
I started building this workflow because I wanted to combine the Budget Plan with my Recurring Expenses workflow, while bringing another layer to the way that I organize my finances. While designing it out, I realized it could alternatively be used to split out and display finances for multiple people.
The basic concept is you would add two subcategories for each category, one for you and one for your partner. Then you would each add your individual budgets for a category to the proper subcategory instead. From there, those individual subcategory budgets would roll up into a single category budget in the Categories sheet (the current process to do this automatically through formulas slows things down significantly, so I’ve been trying to design a workaround to that).
With the new reports, you will be able to view your budgets at a category level (combined budget) or a subcategory level (individual budgets). They would be broken out under the appropriate category item, like how the current report displays categories under groups. The category line will have the combined totals for all people, and the subcat line will have the individual budget, actual, and available amount per person.
Let me know if this solution interests anybody. I’m hoping to have it done in the next couple of weeks, but there’s a lot to work out, so can’t guarantee a deadline. It’s also a bit of a performance hog, but I feel the added value more than makes up for a slight lag here and there.
Impressive solutions! I’ve enjoyed following the shared finances topic since I joined. It has shaped how I’ve tailored my workflow. I’m looking forward to trying @1Email2RuleThemAll 's expansive solution. There’s something to say for my more light footprint approach, possibly. I’ll get it in shape for sharing, but briefly: we fit the personal account + joint accounts profile, and key design choices include:
Two columns are added to Transactions for Jack and Diane, in addition to the original Amount. Depending on whose account was used, 100% of the amount will be added to that person and 0% for the other, or if the joint account was used, the amount is split based on your split ratio. In my example, assume Jack is 40% and Diane 60%.
A single column is added to Budget Plan called “Split,” with a dropdown choice of Jack, Diane, or Joint. For example, let’s say “Groceries” is Joint. I don’t have to create a subcategory for Jack and Diane, but will select “Joint” in the dropdown, which will allocate 40% for Jack and 60% for Diane.
For foundation reports like Monthly Budget, you add a dropdown that allows you to select Jack, Diane, or Joint. If you select Jack, it changes the “helper data” address input from Amount to Jack, and the column address updates accordingly. If you change it back to Joint to see the full household amount, it switches the value back to Amount. The helper data section also needs the budget columns of Jack and Diane, which is calculated from the Budget Builder.
