Savings Budget - checking that it tracks real-world savings

Google Sheets
21

Hi @reslarson and welcome!

There is indeed a way to see your “To Be Budgeted” amount. If you are using the Savings Budget template, there are two places you can find this information, but they may be hidden by default.

  1. There is a row group around row 4 that can be expanded to show some sparkline metrics. The first metric is the “Budgeted <month> Cashflow” which represents the balance of income that has been budgeted towards expenses, positive or negative.
  2. If you want to see more details on how the sparkline metrics are generated, you can unhide columns J and K. At the top of these columns are the “Budget Health” offsets for the current month and the entire budget.

I hope that helps!

22

I have found a problem with how I am using the Savings Budget sheet.

I have two categories: “**Automobile” and “Tami’s Automobile”

When I set an expense transaction to the “Tami’s Automobile” category, the Savings Budget sheet subtracts money from BOTH categories. I believe that this is because the system is interpreting the ** at the start of **Automobile as Wildcards.

Note that I changed the ** to ~ , and it fixes that problem but leaves another. The new problem is that the Savings Sheet now keeps both the effects of the **Automobile budget expense transactions and the effects of the ~Automobile budget expense transactions. My guess is that I need to re-install the Savings Budget sheet to fix this.

23

That is a bizarre problem and I appreciate your diligence in looking into it, @reslarson

One thing you might try… unhide the sheet called Budget Journal. This is where past adjustments are stored so they can be incorporated into calculations. Check if those previous entries still use the old “**Automobile” category.

Note: if you used the Rename Category workflow to change the “**Automobile” to “~Automobile”, it SHOULD HAVE updated the entries in the Budget Journal.

Either way, you may need to make that change manually now.

Let me know if this helps.

24

I have nothing in the Budget Journal tab. Note that I changed the category names manually–I did not use the Rename Category workflow (as I did not know it existed).

It turns out the the problem is that I didn’t change the category associated with my Transaction. Once I did that, it fixed itself.

Now, how do I get the sidebar up for making adjustments to Budget and Savings amounts?

25

Glad to hear you resolved that issue, @reslarson. I think the Rename Category workflow would’ve addressed that issue for you. :wink:

Instructions for making adjustments are here.