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Aman Bhimani
YNAB does this very well right now, and would love to see that here. Basically, you can assign your dollars a "job". Some are budgeted towards spending and paying for stuff, and some are given the job to be saved. Is it possible to have a similar concept here? I'm not sure how that would work, because a budget in Lunch Money is basically a spreadsheet with numbers, and doesn't really take into consideration how much money you actually have in your accounts at any given time.
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Patrick
When is this going to be released ?
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Alex
You may have seen this before, but I think Betterment has a pretty elegant solution for saving planning. They incorporate interest/market growth more, but the general idea of combining one-off large deposits with monthly contributions and a time horizon helps you easily see if your plan will let you save effectively. They have a few investment calculations that wouldn't be needed in Lunch Money's case as well.
Part of what they do is allow you to set individual "goals" within one savings account. This allows you to track progress against each goal, but also have an overflow "general savings" account for unassigned funds.
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Brian Carmichael
I think you should keep this particular feature simple and just say "I want my savings acct(s) to hit X by this time. am I on track or not." the buckets and goals are almost a separate part for the issues Sam mentioned. To keep the theme with the budget bars. Orange/Yellow if im not on track and need to catch up to my goal. Green if im on schedule
Akshaya Srivatsa
Big vote for me. I actually follow this system and save money. I have buckets like property tax, federal tax etc.. I even used this system to save money to get my windows replaced.
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Sam Lawrence
This is a very difficult feature to get right. If I'm saving for a $3,000 car, and I have $4,500 in my bank, have I saved for the car? Well, it depends on how much buffer I need in my account after spending. I feel like any budgeting tool that "holds" buckets of money for specific purchases, also needs to include a concept of a baseline buffer, and a way to determine the order in which the buckets are filled.
Personally, I don't find this system useful. I simply keep a comfortable cash buffer for "everything", and then make purchases on credit cards which I pay off in total. So, rather than saving for specific items, I just aggressively save for everything, and then spend judiciously.
I wonder if there is a way to rethink this entire problem to meet the needs of both strict per-item budgeters, as well as looser, less specifically goal-oriented users like me. Most tools tend to go too far in one direction.
Jen
Sam Lawrence: Hi Sam, you've hit the nail on the head here. I fall in the same category as you– I don't find most savings/goals systems particularly useful as I don't save with a number or item in mind. The bucketing/envelope system also feels shaky. But it's very clear that it's an important feature for many Lunch Money users. I feel confident and am excited to devise a system that satisfies the happy medium :)
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Sam Lawrence
Jen: The way Simple was set up was highly prized by "envelope saver" users. I never used their savings and goals features, but for those who did, I know that Simple shutting down has been received as really bad news. You may find this Hacker News comment thread of some value as you sort through priorities for this feature (or feature set). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25674964
Adam
Sam Lawrence: I solved this problem in my own attempt at a budgeting app (don't worry, it didn't work out, there's no competition here ;) )
In my app, I simply looked at an account and if the user marked it as an account that should hold savings targets then the USER determines where that money is bucketed. To your example, if you've got $4,500 in an account, you tell the app how much is going towards a certain bucket (like a car). So perhaps you've only saved $1,500 because you want $3,000 of buffer (or you want to put it towards that beach vacation—it's okay we won't judge!)
In my opinion, I REALLY liked that approach because then if I have a long-term target (such as a house or new car in 5 years) then I can steal from that fund short-term to fund things that are more urgent without feeling guilty—I know that money is moving and it let's me determine what bucket that money belongs to. It also allows flexibility to say, "No, only $500 in this account is a "bucket", so let the rest just be sitting capital."
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Travis Caro
This is a big one for my wife and I. Expense tracking is one side of the coin and I think Lunch Money does a great job. The other side of the coin is saving for large purchases or even "buckets" that I can drain such as vacation or Christmas for example.
Also I like to keep and allocate a certain amount of liquid cash as an "emergency fund" that is not necessarily synonymous with a Savings account balance (my savings account includes cash for multiple goals simultaneously).
Love the work you do. Throw my vote for this feature in the hat :)
Jen
under review
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Rob
Hi Jen,
I think your use case is very important from two points of view
#1 - The envelope problem that Adam mentioned below, saving a pool of money for a specific goal.
#2 - Handling large one time yearly expenses (property tax).
Big upvote from me.
Should this be in the budget area to make it easier to find?
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Syril Mathai
Rob: Jen Yip love the idea of this from Ally Bank
Adam
Ahh, yes—the old "envelope" problem. I tried solving this in my own personal budgeting app that I never fully fleshed out. What I did was attempt to allow a given account (like a savings account, for instance) and divide the available balance of that account into "goals" that I'm saving for. Then when I spent something towards those goals, I just moved that balance out of the savings and into checkings so it could actually cover the expense.
Very much in favor of this feature!
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