Dear Goodbudget,
Each month, on the fifteenth, $250 is withdrawn from my chequing account and transferred to my emergency fund (a TFSA) and another $250 is withdrawn from the same chequing account and transferred to my wife’s RRSP. What is the best way to enter this information into Goodbudget? Do I treat it like an expense, an account transfer, or something else?
Michael
It’s just an account transfer. Now I don’t know how your envelopes are set up so I can’t tell you if any envelope transfer has to occur. But by your description, it’s a simple account transfer.
Thanks for the response. I’ve been debating whether or not I want to add my TFSA to Goodbudget, as I don’t want to use the money except in case of emergency. The RRSP is under my wife’s name, so I don’t have access to the amount, but the money comes out of our joint chequing account. I’m not sure if that clarifies things.
If you’re not tracking the account(s) the money is being moved too, then you should actually record it as an Expense, because for all intents and purposes the money is exiting the household (at least the household as Goodbudget sees it).
Alternatively, you can record it as an Account balance adjustment, and simply edit your Account’s balance to manually decrease it. This will generate a balance adjustment transactions that you can rename to explain what happened.
Thanks, Alex. I suspected that might be the solution, but I appreciate you confirming as much.
Take care!
I treat my 403(b) and IRA contributions as expenses and don’t track them in good budget, but I do my short-term emergency fund as an envelope transfer into a “goal” account as I occasionally spend out of that envelope - that way it is easy to account for those funds. However, I have started setting up some CDs that mature monthly as a “lost job” type of emergency fund, and I do these as an expense - if/when I have to cash them in, they would then be my monthly income.
I think it does just depend on how you conceive of those accounts.
Thank you!