@jlp Thanks for sharing that approach, insightful.
Hi Tiller team! I’m looking to incorporate tracking of moments when I move cash to an investment. I don’t need a connection to a brokerage account and have a real time update (this is honestly something I don’t want to see). Is there a way to incorporate a new section in the yearly budget for investments? Right now I can mark it as income, expense, or transfer but each isn’t right. Incomes would be double counting (Ex. paycheck and then invested counts twice as income), expense isn’t right because it’s not, transfer is the most similar, but it’s automatically hidden in the yearly budget.
How can I create a new section in the yearly budget that meets my goal?
From a budgeting perspective, I classify any money that goes into investments as an expense and as income when I withdraw. Any activity inside of investments accounts (e.g. dividends, interest, fees, etc.) are under transfers.
The reason I do this is that I budget a certain amount each month to invest so it’s an expense line item. I do this so I can (hopefully) have higher income from them down the road, which is why when I withdrawal, they are income line items. This is very straightforward and makes complete sense to me.
Where it gets more complicated and powerful is what specific categories to use for all these transactions. For example, if I transfer money from a checking account into an investment account, there are 2 transactions to classify- withdrawal from checking and deposit into the investment account.
I categorize the w/d as “Education funding” (if it goes into my kid’s Education fund; different category if it’s into a Retirement investment account). Education funding is an Expense and a line item in my budget. For the deposit into the investment account, I categorize as “Investment cash flow” which is grouped as a Transfer so it doesn’t double count the transaction.
I created reports that use Investment cash flow category to calculate returns by account for different time frames so I know how my investment accounts are doing.
Hope this helps.
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Additionally @kevinquigley18 does this section of this help article about budgeting for transfers help?
I also would like to replace quicken with tiller. I need my portfolio positions as I access them with excel for analysis. I tried some of the community solutions but several of my tickers don’t work with google finance. I’m at the end of my 30 day trial and not having my portfolio positions with my edward jones and fidelity accounts is a deal breaker for me.
Hi @jmoffotca thank you for your interest in Tiller. As some Community members have mentioned, detailed holdings data and investment portfolio tracking is not something that’s currently available. Right now we can pull in the balance data and some transaction data (contributions, interest paid, and withdrawals) for your investment account so long as the institution your investment accounts are under is supported by our data provider.
Hi Cowboy13, i have been using Tiller Budget for about 1 year. I am just now experimenting with net worth tracker and brokerage connections. Today is the first i have read response in the community. I see from this thread you are familiar with investment tracking add in’s for return, etc. Will you please point me in the correct direction to find these add in’s? I would like to experiment and try them. Do you you use the net worth tracker in conjunction with add in’s? And are you familiar with any conversations related to dividend tracking within Tiller? I appreciate your help? Thanks Nick
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Hi @nkostich1 , while you wait to hear back from @Cowboy13 have you already checked out this solution Investment Returns (Monthly, Annual, Total, XIRR)! ?
@twalane’s link is what I was going to share with you. Start there and let me know if you have any questions in that thread.
Thanks!
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Hi Cowboy13, I have the link and access to the templates. Appreciate your assistance on this. I will spend some time with this and review. Thank you.