> I haven't been using the program long enough to experience a rollover, > but its my understanding that when the previous months $1100 rolls > over into the current month's Long Term Emergency Fund, when I go to > allocate my salary, it will think the bucket is full for the month and > skip over it, leaving a surplus of funds to distribute.
Chris, this is not actually the behavior of MoneyWell. The amount that you have designated to be allocated will be allocated regardless of the amount in the bucket. If you say you want to allocate $1,100 into the bucket, $1,100 will be added assuming that you have enough money in your income buckets to add (if you do not have enough money to cover all the allocations, the money will be allocated in order of the priority you have designated). This means that if the bucket is negative, you'll have an amount less than $1,100 after allocation. If your bucket is positive prior to allocation, you'll have more than $1,100. > Maybe flag each buckets as either a > recurring plan, or a cumulative one. For recurring buckets, the > allocation process always puts the same amount in each time, no matter > how much rolls over. For cumulative plans, the allocation process > keeps rollover in mind and just brings the fund up to the spend plan > level. Recurring would be used for future-looking goals, like savings. > Cumulative will be on backward-looking expenses like fuel. I think that there is a strong case to be made for bucket-types. One example I can think of is for lunch money. If you don't use it all one month, it doesn't make any sense for you to have more the next month--you intend to spend the same amount every month, and a little extra doesn't do any good. Kevin has talked about adding a "piping" feature, to keep in line with the bucket theme, where you would pipe the extra money once a designated bucket is considered "full" (currently, there is no concept of a "full" bucket in MoneyWell) to another specified bucket, such as Savings. Kevin proposal also has the great benefit of not throwing a spending plan out of whack--I don't know how he would address overspend buckets and whether they would be filled back to the line, or if they would just get the maximum of the allocation--I suppose a reverse pipe could be installed so that if you spent too much on lunch money, Savings would be used to fill it back up to the line the next month--but this has spending plan implications that may be undesirable. > I don't intend to use these expense buckets each month, but I want to > keep filling them so I can accumulate a larger bucket. So I stick it > in my spend plan to divy up my salary toward those goals. I keep these > funds in a separate account (I'll add my vote for tying buckets to > specific accounts), so I'll do a transfer into that high-yield savings > account in the amount of $1450/month. I have a spendplan with the > above monthly amounts entered. Your intended use of MoneyWell is precisely why buckets should not be tied to accounts, in my opinion. Suppose, given your example, you've been Saving for two months when your car breaks down. You would have $2,900 in Savings. Suppose you have $3,000 in your checking account, and all your money is allocated across buckets. If your Emergency Fund were tied to your Savings account, you would have to repair your car from money in Savings. Typically, we don't write checks from Savings accounts (we can only make 6 withdrawals/ month). Alternatively, you could borrow money from another bucket--so you fix your car with money in the Grocery bucket (you don't have a Emergency Fund bucket for your checking account), and then create the transfer from Savings to Checking and then replace the money that was used. So, now, every time you look at your Grocery bucket, you'll have a big expense that is for car repair. The graphs should appear correct, assuming that you paid for the repairs and paid yourself back in the same month, but this is very unnatural. Right now, MoneyWell allows you to spend money to repair your car right out of your checking account or credit card and assign the money to your Emergency Fund. If you need more money in checking to pay other bills, you can transfer the money from savings to checking, but using MoneyWell essentially guarantees that you have all the money that you have allocated to buckets available to you in either checking or savings. I think that most people ultimately would prefer to not have to worry about where the money is (where is my Emergency Fund money??). MoneyWell makes it so that it doesn't matter. A dollar in the checking account is the same as a dollar in savings. A dollar in the emergency fund bucket is the same as a dollar in the grocery bucket It doesn't really matter where the money is stored--savings, checking, cash, etc. As long as you are using MoneyWell to track that account and assign transactions from that account to buckets, you won't overspend money that you have. You will have to make sure that you have funds available to cover future bills that target that account (and that the money isn't being stored in a different account), but that is something that we have always had to do. Grace to you, Blair On Dec 6, 2008, at 8:31 PM, Chris Robb wrote: > > I've been completely enamored with Moneywell since I discovered it > last week. Kevin has truly put together an amazing program. > Unbelievable, really. I have a few questions, but I'm going to start > with the biggest one. Sorry if it's been asked before. Couldn't find > anything with the search. > > So, in addition to keeping myself straight on a monthly budget, I want > to use Moneywell to keep track of savings goals. For example, I have > the following classifications of Savings, where I want to put the > following amount into each pile when each paycheck is distributed: > > Tax Bill Savings - $200/month > Long Term Emergency Fund - $1100/month > Big Ticket Purchases - $150/month (e.g. I want to buy a blu-ray player > at some point, but want to save up for it first.) > > I don't intend to use these expense buckets each month, but I want to > keep filling them so I can accumulate a larger bucket. So I stick it > in my spend plan to divy up my salary toward those goals. I keep these > funds in a separate account (I'll add my vote for tying buckets to > specific accounts), so I'll do a transfer into that high-yield savings > account in the amount of $1450/month. I have a spendplan with the > above monthly amounts entered. > > I haven't been using the program long enough to experience a rollover, > but its my understanding that when the previous months $1100 rolls > over into the current month's Long Term Emergency Fund, when I go to > allocate my salary, it will think the bucket is full for the month and > skip over it, leaving a surplus of funds to distribute. > > Is this correct? If so, is there a way to force the allocate process > to honor your spending plan. Maybe flag each buckets as either a > recurring plan, or a cumulative one. For recurring buckets, the > allocation process always puts the same amount in each time, no matter > how much rolls over. For cumulative plans, the allocation process > keeps rollover in mind and just brings the fund up to the spend plan > level. Recurring would be used for future-looking goals, like savings. > Cumulative will be on backward-looking expenses like fuel. > > Thanks. > > -Chris > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
