How best to structure saving in advance for a large purchase (i.e. car)?

KevinM1

I use one main bank account for bill pay and 2 other bank accounts to save in advance for future purchases (Car, Taxes). My previous technique has been to pay a 'bill' monthly that's actually a transfer from my main bill pay account into one of the 2 savings accounts earmarked for the future expense. This has allowed me to partition and accumulate larger sums of money in separate accounts without comingling funds. Since quicken transfers are not classified as an expense, I cannot track accurately in my budget reports. Is there a better technique?

Many thanks to the community for assisting a new user.

GeoffG

You might find Savings Goals helpful. You can press F1 Help in Quicken and do a search for more info.

KevinM1

Thank you. Still studying Quicken. Open to any others who may have the account journals and budgeting in a clean scheme. Thank you community.

NotACPA

In your budgets, have you looked into including transfers?

And, in general, "Savings Goals" would be the preferable way to handle your situation ... plus using that feature would allow you to get rid of the 2 ancillary accounts.

BTW, neither your transfers to the 2 accounts nor moving the money to a Savings Goal are expenses.  The expense occurs when you actually make the payment  for the car or the taxes.

An expense lowers your net worth, a transfer to these other accounts doesn't.  It merely moves money from one pocket  to another ...  but it's still in your pockets.

KevinM1

Very helpful. I now have the transfers showing as an "expense" relative to my budget reporting. I just need to figure out how to organize the transfer as a sub category (for example, transfer of [TO Car account] would be under "Auto" category in my budget as I consider it my car payment.

Again, my thanks to you and the community!

Sherlock

KevinM1 said:

Very helpful. I now have the transfers showing as an "expense" relative to my budget reporting. I just need to figure out how to organize the transfer as a sub category (for example, transfer of [TO Car account] would be under "Auto" category in my budget as I consider it my car payment.

Again, my thanks to you and the community!

If you want to include a loan payment in a budget, I suggest you select Detailed Loan Payments and check the loan: select open the budget and Manage Budget Categories

Tom Young

"I now have the transfers showing as an "expense" relative to my budget reporting. I just need to figure out how to organize the transfer as a sub category (for example, transfer of [TO Car account] would be under "Auto" category in my budget as I consider it my car payment."

From an accounting viewpoint, you can't have a transfer from one Account to another Account, something that happens entirely on your balance sheet, also show up as a Category, a true expense that reduces your net worth.  The best you can do is to have the transfer show up as a pseudo "expense" in the "Expenses" section of a Spending report.  If you want to, you can even budget for these transfers and have a budget report that shows you if you're "keeping up" with your budget.