Rolling Budget Advice

Apologies in advance if this has been asked or solved already, but I’m hoping to get some advice on a budgeting issue I’m trying to solve.

Here’s the situation: I use Tiller to manage our budget, and I have several categories that are spread evenly across the year to represent our annual budget. However, the problem is that our spending in these categories can be quite back-loaded in certain months. For example, our clothing budget is spread out across the year, but in some months we spend $0, and then in other months we overspend compared to the monthly allocation.

What I’m looking for is a way to have a “rolling budget” where if we don’t spend the monthly allocation, the balance simply rolls over to the next month. This would help me get a clearer picture of how we’re pacing on our annual cashflow and how much we truly have available for categories that vary month-to-month.

Has anyone implemented something like this in Tiller? If so, I’d love to hear how you did it or any suggestions for how I could set this up.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers!

This is what you’re looking for and it’s excellent.

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I agree with @mu3484343, the Savings Budget does exactly what you’re describing. I’ve used it for almost a year and love it.

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Thank you both! This looks excellent!

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#TeamSavingsBudget! Seriously, the Savings Budget is my daily driver in Tiller. It can take a little getting used to, so feel free to ask any questions. There are a bunch of us who use it.

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Thanks all! So I’ve been playing around with the Savings Budget, but not sure I’m understanding, or have the right workflow.

Here is an example… Let’s say I have $1000 to use for Christmas related expenses. Those expenses are spread out over the year leading up to December. So, ideally, I would have $1000 in my Christmas category starting in January, then whatever I didn’t spend in January would move into February’s budget, and so on.

The primary reason this would be helpful is to understand my overall EOY cashflow projections.

Does this make sense or line up still with the Savings Budget solution?

Yes, that should work well with the Savings Budget, I think. What I would do is, first, create a Christmas Expenses category. Then, in January, I would add $1000 to the Savings for that category (ensure that Christmas Expenses is set to track Savings on your Categories sheet). When I incur a Christmas Expense, I would categorize it as a Christmas Expense, and it’ll draw down from the Savings. Whatever is left in the Savings will move on to the next month. Key to this is that you wouldn’t otherwise budget any money to be spent in the Christmas Expense Category. All the expenses are coming from the Savings. Hope that makes sense, but please let me know if not and I can try to clarify.

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Got it and that makes sense! So you’re not really using the Monthly or Yearly Budgets since the Category budgets aren’t really getting updated, right?

My only challenge with this is, as of right now, I heavily use the Yearly Budget to forecast my EOY cash flow. For example, I have a sheet that references the Actual cashflow for past months and Budgeted for future months to show me where I’m going to land.

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Right. The Category budgets do get updated, but not in a way that’s all that meaningful (as I’m basically using an envelope budgeting approach). And, no, I don’t use the Monthly or Yearly budgets. My Tiller workflow involves mostly my Savings Budget and my Live Profit-and-Loss sheet.

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Yeah that’s a bit what I was afraid of. I’ll continue to mess around with it and see if I can make it work for me. Appreciate the thoughts!

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Hi there! I’ve got the same question and I’m hopeless with spreadsheets. Just to clarify what you’re saying here-

In January would you put the $1000 in your category sheet? Or yearly budget? I’m trying to figure out how it populates to the Savings Budget in a way that makes sense.

Thanks so much!

Hi. Savings don’t necessarily need to be added to your Category sheet. You can add Savings to the Savings Budget using the Adjust. +/- Savings function in the upper right. That Savings number won’t appear anywhere else. You can put whatever number you want in the Savings Budget (i.e., if you’ve saved a million dollars toward a goal, you can just add it there and it doesn’t need to come from anywhere else).

That said, I think most of us who use the Savings Budget add to Savings in certain categories when we have unspent income in a given month. In that case, I would budget a certain amount to a Category, and if I don’t spend that money, then it will roll over to Savings. An example:

It’s January. I have an annual goal of saving $15,000 for my kid’s college tuition. I’m starting the month with $3000 that I’ve already saved toward that goal in the previous year. So, I add $3000 to the Savings for my College Tuition category. In each month of the year, then, I aim to budget $1000 for College Tuition, but I’m not necessarily spending that money each month because tuition gets paid once a year. When I don’t spend that budgeted $1000 in a month, it rolls into my Savings for College Tuition. When it comes time to pay my tuition, I can use the amount I’ve accrued in Savings to offset the actual expense when it hits my College Tuition category. If I happen to have more money left over unspent at the end of a given month, then I might budget that excess to the College Tuition category for it to roll over into Savings so I can get ahead of my goal.

Hope that helps.

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