Hi Dave, The main purpose of an envelope budgeting system is to make sure you divide up your income and set it aside for various purposes and then only spend what is in envelopes. Given this concept, your savings accounts are your destination for money but not necessarily a bucket.
If you have money automatically diverted from your paycheck to savings, you don't need to track this with buckets. It's never in your cash flow so just track the bank register of your savings account and be thrilled that you are so good about setting aside money. For certain infrequent expenses, I know they are coming but won't happen until later in the year (birthday and Christmas presents as an example) but I have a buckets for Gifts Given and others to hold allocated money so I can set it aside. For unexpected expenses, I use my Savings bucket and set aside a consistent amount each month and any extra I can stock away in it and then transfer that money to my savings account making sure to assign the outgoing expense side of that transfer to the Savings bucket so it drains that bucket. I don't try to track unexpected expenses. Instead I try to continually build a war chest of money so I'm ready when they happen. There's no way to budget for everything but it sounds like you have a good handle on it. Just don't try to force savings into buckets except for the setting aside money part. Peace, Kevin Hoctor [email protected] No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com On Mar 6, 2009, at 1:43 PM, Dave Hirsch wrote: > First: I've read a great deal on this list about how to set up savings > accounts, but I'm not sure this has been covered. > > I have three savings accounts: > 1) Summer savings: Part of my paycheck gets automatically diverted to > this to account for the fact I get paid 9 months a year. I have > control over this money and would like to track it, but the money > doesn't come to me as part of my regular paycheck, which gets > deposited into my checking account. > 2) Infrequent Expenses: Many of my buckets are meant to be savings- > related, to build up money until needed. For example, my gifts bucket > saves up until needed, primarily around December. This account is > intended to be the real account in which that money resides. > 3) Rainy Day Fund: A general accumulation account into which I > transfer $200 per month from my checking account. > > I understand that I could just keep all the money in one account and > keep track of it using buckets, but that doesn't appeal to me, > especially since I'm still getting up to speed with Moneywell, and I > might make mistakes with it, causing me to mis-identify how much money > I have in a given bucket. Having separate accounts is extra insurance > against spending my savings. > > The Rainy Day Fund can be dealt with using one of the methods > described here: > http://alan.petitepomme.net/blog/2008/04/tracking-savings-in-moneywell.html > > How to deal with the other two, though? > Summer savings: I'd like to consider this income deferred, and not > even assign it a bucket, until I withdraw it during the summer. At > that time I'd move it to checking and call it income. Perhaps that is > unwise, though? And if I do that, every contribution to Summer > Savings makes my Unassigned bucket be nonzero. > > Infrequent Expenses: No idea. Help, please. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
