I have a Goal envelope where I want to keep track of how much I’m saving, but I don’t want to use this money if I can avoid it. The problem is that the amount I have saved in that Goal envelope shows in the total of my Account, but since I want to pretend this money does not exist, it is problematic that it adds to the total so it’s not really accurate in a way.
Could you advise if it is possible to “hide” the Goal saved amount from the Total account balance?
I just want to be able to see how much I can really spend, removing the savings so they are not part of my total.
I hope I’m understanding your question correctly, and if so, I want to point out that nothing in your envelopes changes your account balances. In the case you describe, you’ll want to put money into a savings envelope but all your spending will also be managed from Envelopes, not Accounts.
Let’s say you have 2,000 in a spending account and you want to try to save 100. You’ll distribute 1,900 to your spending envelopes and 100 to the goal envelope but that won’t change your account balance. When you spend 1,900 those envelopes will be at zero, and if something comes up you’ll do an envelope transfer from savings to cover it. Likewise if you underspend you can transfer the remainder into that envelope for later. Either way, you’re spending from your envelopes, never your accounts. Does that make sense?
Some of us have requested the ability to toggle savings accounts off for the unallocated balance, but in the meantime the workaround is a savings envelope. The bottom line is that you’ll really only use your Accounts when you’re reconciling; everything else should be managed from Envelopes.
Once final and drastic option is to open a separate Savings account and not track it in Goodbudget at all, but that’s really only helpful if you just cannot keep yourself from using your Savings money.
Hopefully that helps!
Hi Tiffany, I just want to clarify that I’m not working with accounts, I use envelopes for everything including savings. It’s just useful to me to see the total of my account with the total of only the budgeting envelopes (not the savings one) so I have a general Idea of where I’m at. If I’m constantly seeing the total affected by the savings envelope it’s going to be confusing for me, not because I use accounts instead of envelopes, but because the way my brain works I need to see the general situation as well as the individual envelopes.
I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well, but I appreciate your time reading this.
What if you made that a sub-envelope, like “Savings: Held Back” or something? That way it would be in its own grouping and the other grouping wouldn’t include it. Maybe that would work?
Hi Tiffany, I was hoping for a way to do it with the general total but I guess I’ll have to work with the groups totals, at least there’s that. Thank you for your help!