Paycheck Calculator and Tracking Deductions as expenses

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Hi. I have been using the paycheck deduction calculator and tracking the deductions in my expenses and have allocated budget for these items. I am showing a slight surplus for a few of the deductions in my savings budget and wasn’t sure if I should allocate those to other expenses in my budget. Feels odd to do so. Welcome any thoughts.

Thanks,

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hey @fost9508 good question. Can you share a link to the paycheck deduction calculator you’re using? Is it this one or something else?

I am not super familiar with this template so it might be helpful to @ the builder in your reply to see if they can chime in on the expected workflow.

Thanks!

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Hi @heather - Sorry for the delay. I missed this response. Yes its that calculator.
@jpfieber

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For a deduction like this, it doesn’t make sense to carry it forward like you would with extra in your grocery budget, so allocating it to something else would probably be the way to go.

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@jpfieber - Thanks. So I have been using your paycheck generator for this year so far and I want to make sure I am using it correctly.

  1. Since this adds an expense transaction I have created some budgets for each deduction. These are rough estimates.
  2. For things like my 401k I have made this a transfer since it really isn’t an expense

Is there a better way to deal with the 401k stuff. Also since I am not exactly sure how much taxes will be taken out of each paycheck (it varies slightly) do you have any recommendations on how to handle these discrepancies, some months I show a slight surplus and since I am paid biweekly there are a couple months where my actual expense is significantly higher than my budget…and on paper for that month my budget looks not great since I have a fairly large overage.

Thanks,

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If you have your 401k account in Tiller, then you’d definitely want related transactions to be Transfers. As far as budgeting goes, it’s tricky, much like other budgeting categories. You could try to figure out an ‘average’ amount and understand that you’ll often be under or over until you get to the end of the year. You could guess on the high end of what might get deducted so you don’t go over, but then assume you’ll have some leftover budget at the end of the year. I guess it really comes down to which method will help you achieve the goals of your budget. If you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, staying within a budget is much different than if you’re using it to determine how much you’ll have left to buy your favorite widget at the end of the year.

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Thanks. I do have my 401k account tied into tiller, but there are all sorts of entries that pop up that are not related to my contributions. I could just delete those ones.

On the budget stuff. Not paycheck to paycheck, but I do try to track everything down as accurately as I can to ensure I have the budget for the things I want and want to do. From what you are saying, I will just keep doing what I am doing and let the stuff average out over time like I do with my income and other stuff.

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I think so. Others can chime in on how they handle it. Mine is pretty consistent, so I’m not in the same situation, but if I was I’d try to make it average out over the year.