Question on savings target calculations

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1

I’m on a trial subscription to Tiller. I’m looking at moving from YNAB to avoid “YNAB + spreadsheets on the side”.

A question on savings target: I want to calculate the amount of money that I’ll need next month. Let’s say I have two categories that I’ve slightly overspent resulting in a reduced checking balance, a savings target that has a balance in it, and I want to keep a thousand dollar buffer.

  • Next Month’s Groceries: $100
  • Next Month’s Utilities: $100
  • Next Month’s House Maintenance Savings Target: $100 + $300 rolling balance.
  • Desired Buffer: $1000
  • Account Balance: $950

Without the savings target balance, this is easy, I need $300 for my budget, a buffer of $1000, so I $350 more dollars on top of the $950 that is in the account now. If I’m doing my own sheet, this is easy to calculate from the categories and balance history sheets.

But I’d like to have a buffer + budget + my savings target balance, which I means I need $650 more dollars. If I’m doing my own sheet, how do I include savings target balances in calculations? The only way I see how to do that is via a vlookup in the savings budget sheet, but that’s not really set up as a register and seems kinda fragile.

2

I’m not totally sure I understand the question, but, as you seem to intuit, VLOOKUPs to the Savings Budget are not robust… mostly because a change in the date selector will invisibly shift your values.

I THINK the best solution may be the following… duplicate the Savings Budget in your spreadsheet. Use one instance visually for day-to-day budgeting. Use the second hidden instance for whatever month you want to model for these calculations. Use formulas in BE2 (or I1:I2) to always drive the active date in the second instance to be the month you want to model. I’d probably also drive the VLOOKUP off the source data in AE:AR rather than the rendered table.

I haven’t tried this so some details may require additional attention.

As for the latest balance, I’d recommend pulling that from the source data in the hidden area on the right of the Accounts sheet rather than the Balances sheet.

Hope this helps and welcome to Tiller!

3

Thanks! That made it super easy to do a sumif on the AE:AR columns, if the “track” column equal to savings then add the “available” column.

Also thank you very much for the tip on the accounts sheet! Was not paying attention at all to the hidden columns there.