Savings Goal or Budget?

Question

I inherited an amount that will be saved/invested and spent for specific purposes.  To avoid the inheritance dissolving into our various checking & savings accounts, I want to track it's where-abouts and manage/budget its use.  So I'm looking for best practices to do this.

My first thought was to setup a Savings Goal in the amount of the inheritance and fully fund (contribute) the goal with the inheritance.  Then as I moved the money to another account, I would withdraw from goal, transfer the money to the new account, then contribute toward the goal from the new account.

However, I'm now wondering if a Budget or some combination with Savings Goal would be a better option, since the inheritance will eventually be deployed and spend down.  I really just want to know where the inheritance money went in the end.

Thanks for your suggestions.

PS:  Using Quicken Classic on Windows with Subscription

Jim_Harman · Answer

If there is a significant amount of money and it will be invested for a long time and you want to keep it apart from your "spending" money, you might want to set up an actual investing account for it. Then you will have to make a conscious decision when you want to transfer it to one of your other accounts and spend it.

If you want that money to be excluded from your net worth and other reports and moved to the bottom of the Account Bar, you could mark the account Separate.

GeoffG · Answer

Either scenario you mapped out sounds like a viable option. So let me offer a third option for you to ponder, an inheritance Tag. If you are unfamiliar with Tags you can look it up in Quicken help. Basically, you create a Tag named.. Inheritance and any register entry that is associated with your inheritance, be it expense or income you would set the Tag. You can create a report that easily tracks the  inheritance and for any given year as needed.

Tags can be turned on/off for any register using the gear icon for each register.