Leave Available alone or clear it to zero

My understanding of Good Budget has grown in leaps and bounds here lately thanks to all of you.

Just moved up to Premier and starting to understand how that works, and trying to figure out the best and easiest way to utilize “Available”, so it can become a useful tool or piece of information for me and my wife going forward.

I have been reading a couple of posts that mention clearing it to zero and was wondering what the advantages or pitfalls that would cause for me.

As it stands I have several Checking accounts and Savings accounts as well as numerous credit cards. I only use envelopes for my primary checking account. The total of all my envelopes equals my primary checking account. One of the envelopes is called “unassigned” which serves the same function as “Available” in GB.

If seems to me that this is kind of redundant and would rather just use my “unassigned” envelopes and include the “GB Available” funds (+ or -) in that envelope making the GB “Available” zero.

Before I get myself in trouble does anyone see anything that would make this a bad move and if not how would I go about doing this and maintaining this?

I appreciate your thoughts and ideas. Thank you in advance.

Hi @Dcntruman – There’s nothing wrong with this! Ultimately, Available is just a default bucket for funds you can budget with, and it’s up to you where you want to put those dollars.

If you have any scheduled Fills from Available, keep in mind that your Available may go negative once those Fills posts. But you can always transfer funds back to Available from your Unassigned Envelope to zero it back out.