Savings Budget - What's the purpose?

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#1

Hi - I just loaded the ‘Savings Budget’ sheet to my Foundation Template.

I loaded it because I’m a big fan of the Envelope Budget sheet, specifically how it dives into specific category spending. I don’t use the rollover budget features.

The ‘Savings Budget’ was promoted as ‘faster’ and an upgrade to the Envelope Budget sheet.

What’s the benefits of the Savings Budget for someone that doesn’t do rollovers (like me)?

Thanks.

#2

The main benefits and functionality are outlined in the documentation. The rollovers are a core part of the new functionality and can be used either to preserve leftovers or shortfalls month-to-month or to create virtual in-category savings.

If your core budgeting goal is spending-tracking with category granularity, the Monthly Budget in the Foundation template is probably best.

#3

Preserving leftovers and shortfalls month-to-month seems like intense tracking. Are many people using that level of detail?

I think a cool feature would ‘smart recommendations’. For example, an alert to invest high balances of cash into investments (ie- high interest checking accounts, money funds, short bonds, etc.).

High balances could be defined and set by the user (ie - 2-5x monthly cash flow)…

-j

#4

I’m currently making heavy use of that detail to track savings goals as well as recurring non-monthly expenses (annual, biannual, quarterly, bi-monthly) that I set aside budget dollars for each month. It takes some initial setup to determine the proper monthly budget, but it’s not a lot of work and becomes largely self-maintaining once the budgets are set. The new Savings & Debt sheet helps automate a lot of those calculations so you know exactly how much you need to budget each month to reach your goal or payoff amount by the deadline. Using that workflow helps plan for and prevent large “surprise” expenses.

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#5

Thanks for sharing your workflow. I’ll have to put more thought into that.

#6

2 posts were split to a new topic: Where Is Data Stored With The Savings Budget?

#7

Exactly. This is the main draw of the Savings Budget solution for me as well. I need to devote some time to the Savings & Debt sheet if that’s a tool to make this non-monthly budgeting task even easier.