I think I do some version of the envelope method, but it’s not clear to me what the best way to implement that within the Tiller workflow. I came here from Mint and just had a very clunky workflow on that end to make do.
I use savings accounts for things like travel and gifts, and allocate money to those accounts every month and if I buy gifts or take travel, I just pull money from those savings accounts to cover my expenses.
I set up the Monthly Budget spreadsheet and have really enjoyed using that tab, but the section of that page with the bar graphs for Spending Budget and Actual Spending throw me off since I often have enough money to cover everything I’ve spent just stored away. It would be nice for that graph to just reflect the things where I’m not also squirreling away money for them.
Is the idea of the Savings Budget workflow that you no longer use the Monthly Budget spreadsheet? I guess that makes sense, but then I’m going to miss the idea of that % of expense budget available bar.
Should I be categorizing transfers I make to my savings accounts for gift and travel as gifts and travel?
Hi. I use the Savings Budget for what I also think would be considered envelope budgeting. I have a couple of savings categories to which I budget funds every month. The magic of the Savings Budget is that if I don’t have any actual expenses against those budgeted funds, then they rollover to savings. When I’m ready to use those savings, I have a separate category to which I can transfer the savings and spend them. So, for example, I would have two categories: Vacation-Savings and Vacation-Expenses. I’d accrue savings in Vacation-Savings and then when the actual expenses hit, I would categorize them as Vacation-Expenses and transfer funds from Vacation-Savings to pay for them. This workflow works for me so far.
The Savings Budget is my workhorse budget sheet. I barely look at the Monthly Budget sheet, but I also was never particularly drawn to the bar graphs on the monthly budget.
Hi, It took me a while to get used to it but I love the Savings Budget sheet. Yes it does not display the graph bars at top but I didn’t like them anyway. I hide the Monthly Budget sheet and never look at it now.
I have a Travel category which I classify as an Expense and give it a budget amount (which is how much I save to it each month). Most months the Travel cat has no transactions against it so the budget amount still gets credited and then accumulates over time. When its time to spend, then any expenses that are for travel (flight, gas, restaurant etc) are classified on the Transactions sheet as Travel (and will show in the Actual). So example if I am budgeting 100 a month, then in 6 months I show balance of 600. Then transactions net against that for that month sheet has 100 going in and spend of 700 which nets to zero because of prior savings.
I love the endorsements of the Savings Budget, @dmetiller and @wendysue757… so good to hear it is working well for you.
The Savings Budget is an alternative to the Monthly Budget, @lala123… though both can coexist in the same spreadsheet. You should be able add a few rows to the header and replicate and sparklines that you depend on.