What's the best way in 'Planning'... savings account (SA) transfers vs using SA for subcategories.

TXShooter

I'm trying to establish a long term budget (20+ years, through retirement) and I'm trying to get it as complete as I can. I've established a Medical savings account for unforeseen medical expenses like copays for the occasional clinic visits, as well as for stuff like broken bones and such, using a dollar figure per year that is the average for the past several years, plus a little more.

I can use Planning | Budgets for the transfers into the savings account, no problem. But how do you categorize the actual usage (transfer out) of that savings account for when you need to purchase medical expense items? Won't categorizing them as, for example "Health & Fitness:Medical Supplies" (for tax purposes), cause the budget to be out of balance for the 'Actual'?

I'm doing the same kind of savings account for Catastrophic Emergency Savings, Vehicle Maintenance, Home Maintenance, Vacation, and General Gifts. By using savings accounts, I can earn a little more interest than keeping the money into a general checking account, and it helps with achieving goals. Once a savings account reaches a targeted point, I use that money toward the next higher priority savings account, and so on.

I can't categorize the transfers, which is indeed part of the budget plan. So, how should I go about categorizing the actual purchases when they happen so that they reflect correctly in the Budget Plan?

Quicken Diana

Hello TXShooter, thank you for reaching out.

It appears the Savings Goals Tool in the Planning Tab would assist with tracking the saving transactions, and the Budgeting Tool could be used for the actual transactions as they occur. Savings Goals will allow you to enter the amounts of money that are going into your savings account and allow you to track this by the specific item that you are saving for, examples being vehicle maintenance, home maintenance ect.

The Budget tool, as you’ve seen, will allow you to set a cap amount that you will spend in a specific area. As transactions are made you can specifically categorize them according the budgeted categories, allowing you to be sure you do not overspend for the month.

You can find the Savings Tool in the Planning Tab.

Once here, chose GET STARTED to add your first goal, chose the amount for the goal and the date that this goal should be achieved.

When you transfer money from the checking account to savings, come to this tab and click on the green + icon CONTRIBUTE. This will manually add a transaction in the register, which can be matched to the transaction that was created when the transfer was made.

There is also an option to make a withdraw, which will create a manual transaction in the register and also can be matched to the transaction created when the actual withdraw was made. This will allow you to track what is in savings and what is allocated for each goal.

I suggest not categorizing the transfer transactions to be specific to what category they are intended for, rather, categorize the transaction that is created when the actual purchase is made.

Does it seem that this will work for your savings and tracking goals? Please let me know what you think, or if you’ve tried this, let me know if you have any further questions as to how to set this up to achieve your personal goals.

- Quicken Diana

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Quicken Diana

TXShooter- Great question.

You can add a contribution to the goal in the Savings Goal tab and then delete the manual transaction that is added to the register. This should reflect the current balances without creating a record of money movement that did not actually happen.

- Quicken Diana

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