Budgeting and categorizing for savings accounts

Google Sheets
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In the past I’ve used the Monthly Tiller budget for the rollovers. I’ve liked it but thought I’d dabble with the new Foundation template that doesn’t support rollovers. I think that using the yearly budget sheet can help me see the the income I’ve saved for certain categories (similar to rollovers) like putting $100 toward my water bill but only spending $70 this month will show $30 left.

The question I have is that I’m not starting with $0 in my bank account, so how do I spend those dollars on paper? Is there a way to track and categorize my savings? I thought about adding an income line in January of the total savings amount I have and allocating to each category until it gets to zero (zero based budgeting) but that way will inflate my income and double count the savings, right?

Do any of you budget your savings? I use Ally and they recently released the savings buckets. I’ve distributed the funds into buckets there but it seems to me that it’s just a fun way to see the numbers. I’d rather see a spreadsheet with total amount in savings with allocation to certain categories. This worked great with rollovers since I just made the rollover numbers that set number I figured out at the time I started budgeting, then each month with my income, added more to be rolled over.

Any advice?

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I too would like to do this.

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Hi @wipersnaz,

Great questions here. Was hoping some other Tiller customers would chime in with recommendations before following up here.

There isn’t a way to “fund” your budget so that you’re not just spending what you earn in a given month with the Foundation Template. This is where the Tiller Budget w/Rollovers shines :sun_with_face:

You could set up two categories for savings. One is an income category marked as “hide” so it doesn’t show on the Budget dashboard and count as income that could be spent. The other is an expense category that you budget for how much you plan to save. The $0 comes in when you “spend” that money (transfer to savings) in that your available will be $0. But there won’t be a way to see how much you’ve saved other than looking at your savings account balance or looking at the yearly view of how much you’ve “spent” on savings so far in the year.

Does that make sense?

Heather

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Yes that seems to make sense but I can understand why the tiller budget with rollover shines. I may end up just using that template.