Account Intent vs. Savings Goal

Question

Besides my IRA's, I have assets in savings accounts and brokerage accounts that have split intentions:  in my different savings accounts, for example, I have some money allocated for specific future needs, for emergency fund, and a bit of it for retirement spending.   In my brokerage account, same.

I've used savings goals in Quicken in the past and had issues (a long time ago).  I only want to use them now to be able to see what my retirement savings is vs. my "other" savings, quickly, within Quicken.

I'd like to hear from anyone currently using savings goals as to how they're working, now; and I'd like to hear from anyone who currently has a similar situation (with "split" intent-of-use across accounts) as to how you keep track easily.

I'm currently using outside spreadsheets, but (because copying/pasting register or report numbers out of Quicken is not flexible enough for me) this means flipping back and forth between Quicken and Excel and reading numbers and typing them into my existing spreadsheet.

glenn · Answer

I agree with GeoffG that savings goal provide a lot of use to indirectly manage savings for future expenditures.  However, using savings goals can be difficult unless you are willing to manage them using the goal register itself for recording activity.  The savings goal screens under the planning option are useless for me, The  goal screen is truncated, inaccurate and useless.

As you can see, all of the tools associated with the goal management are lost.  This has been reported as an issue but never investigated or resolved.

GeoffG · Answer

Not sure what issues you've had with savings goals in the past, but I've been using for one or two decades without issue. The only downside I would say is that it does tend to make the host account a bit messy in terms of register entries in/out and reconciled vs non-reconciled entries. All of which can be overcome.

I was using savings goals in a bank money market account with four specific goals. Some short term and some long term. Bank interest rates suck, so I decided to migrate the savings goals and the funds to an investment money market account. Since I new the account register can get messy, I decided to open a separate Vanguard money market fund solely for savings goals. With the account set up and savings goals configured to show in the account bar, I can easily reconcile at a glance while making a bit more interest.

I've set everything to autopilot by automating the funding deposits from my bank to Vanguard and any withdrawals back to my bank using Vanguards scheduler. I established Bill & Income Transfer Reminders in Quicken to coincide with the bank/Vanguard transfers and they work perfectly. With a dedicated savings goal account, savings status and balancing is effortless.