I have an Annual Goal envelope for car maintenance. I set it to €1000 and set a date by which to fill it.
I was spending from it whilst also filling it every month. Eventually, I reached the €1000 (and got the ‘Hooray, you did it!’ banner) but then needed to spend from this envelope several more times (plus I dipped into it occasionally to top up other envelopes).
The problem is, now that I’ve reached my goal, Goodbudget no longer suggests a monthly fill amount, even though I am still occasionally spending from it. Is that because I should now only be spending what’s left in that envelope and no more?
The issue I have with that is that it throws my monthly budget off whack. It looks great now (no more monthly filling of this envelope!), but from January, when I need to fill that envelope again, my budgeted amount will go up by €80/month. And that’s just for this envelope, there are other annual envelopes where a similar thing is happening (for example, vacations and gifts).
All this suggests I am using this envelope wrong, or am misunderstanding their proper function.
Can you give me some advice/tips for better use of this function? Thank you!
I don’t think there is a perfect solution to this problem.
If you use a date, then GB will divide up the remaining amount to add each month to hit that goal by the date. But then you get these sorts of problems where you’re spending while adding and the date-based logic breaks down.
Or you can not use a date, which just gives you a kind of “fund” to add to or spend from as needed but you lose all the date based suggestions.
Personally, I only use dates on annual envelopes for things that have an actual due date, such as Costco membership renewal. That way I set a little bit aside each month until I hit the goal just before the expense is due.
For things like “Car Maintenance Fund” which is just an envelope of money set aside when I am able to help offset future irregular expenses, I use a plain goal envelope. I don’t really treat these as regular “on budget” expenses and just add to them when I can. If you want to explicitly add X dollars per month as part of your budget, then I would create a monthly envelope for X dollars, and a non-dated envelope to hold the long-term funds. Fill your monthly envelope as part of your regular budget and at the end of the month just transfer whatever is left to the goal envelope.
My understanding is a “goal” envelope is to be created and used for a one-time purpose. That is, I need x amount of dollars for a one-time purchase then use the goal envelope. Personally, I use a regular envelope for what you’re describing. However, everyone has their own work-arounds with GB, but just wanted to throw out the designed purpose of this type of envelope.
I agree with both of the answers you’ve already seen, and would add that a regular monthly envelope could serve the same function. If your Fill instruction is toggled to Add, the balance will continue to climb throughout the year. Some months it may fall to below the €80 you’ve budgeted due to a large expense, while in many others it will be well above that.
A monthly or annual envelope can accomplish this but setting the date as a Goal seems to be where it’s creating confusion.
I’m sorry to come back to this, but I’m having an error with this whole topic of Annual envelopes with or without dates, Goals with or without dates, etc. I have been experimenting with this and seeing what GB does with my monthly amounts and I can’t make sense of it.
I’ve got two problems going on right now:
Taking your example, @kschedler, I have set up a number of subscription envelopes. I just paid out my Amazon Prime subscription and set the date for the same time next year. GB now calculates my monthly payment into this deposit to be 49 cents, which is just not right. If I change the date to a month later then it calculates it to be around €5, which is correct, but that would be too late.
I have an annual payment for €1400 that comes due on the 1st of january. I just paid that off and now the counter should reset right? But here is what I see in the summary bar at the top:
“You have saved 304.50 so far. You have 1,095.50 more to fill!”
But the actual amount in the envelope is 211.50 (i.e. two payments that GB itself calculated I would need to pay monthly).
How come the amount in the envelope and what I am supposed to have saved already are different?
This is confusing me so much that the only workaround I can see is once the payment is made is to make a new envelope for next year’s payment, transfer any money left over into that one, and start again. I would need to do this with all of my annual subscriptions.
@goodbudget could there be a problem with the calendar settings? I have just tried to set up a subscription for €99 due march 17th 2026 by clicking through the months using GB’s own calendar. No matter what I do, on clicking ‘done’ it tells me my monthly payment will be €99 which means it’s obviously using march 2025…
The main problem here is the due date calculations in GB are pretty basic and sometimes need a cycle to start coming out “correct”. Like, if you create an envelope today for an annual expense that happens to be due today, then fill it an pay it, GB will consider it fully paid up until next year when the calculation resets. I’ve had such envelopes calculate a zero monthly fill amount. It’s attempting to calculate based solely on the facts it knows, which are limited to a couple of dates and any existing transactions.
Someone from GB will have to explain further, but it’s usually the case that if you can’t wait until the next due date "reset’, then just create a new envelope right now and it should be fine going forward, i.e. you shouldn’t have to do it again next year.
@Steve - Thanks for posting and sorry for the confusion!
To start, generally, the suggested Fill amount you see is based on how much you’ve filled into the Envelope (not the Envelope’s balance) divided by how many Fill opportunities you have left before the Envelope is due (whether that’s a Due Date that you’ve manually set or the end of a year in the case of an Annual Envelope). (You can see a fuller explanation on our help center.)
In your second bullet – it sounds like GB is telling you that you’ve filled that Envelope with 304.50 so far since Jan 1. It won’t matter that you’ve just paid the bill and that the balance is 211.50, because GB is looking at your Fills and not your balance.
I have less info about your first bullet, but it sounds like GB is suggesting such a small amount as your Fill amount because you likely already filled it close to your target amount, and so GB is trying to help you not save more than that. If you’d like GB to increase your suggested Fill, you can either increase your budget, or drop the Due Date. That way, GB will divide your target amount by an even 12 (if you’re budgeting Monthly).