Can you use money already saved pre-Quicken in a Budget?
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karensc7
Member ✭✭
When we first started using Quicken late last year, I already had money in our savings account designated in our previous financial software for various things. However, because it wasn't income for that current month, I wasn't able to put it into our Budget, as far as I can tell. Is there a way to do this without relying on Savings Goals? Because this trying to work with Savings Goals and covering the budget spending is more messy than it's worth.
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Answers
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I've been trying to figure out a solution. At this point, this is what I've come up with...
Keep Savings Goals (SG) [categorizes the money we had before the budget began]
Withdraw exact amount from SG
Enter transaction in Credit Card and NOT assign a category. Tag it appropriately.
Money withdrawn from SG covers expense in CC.
Example:
Withdraw $268 from SG: Vacation
Enter transaction in CC: Ferry Company / no category / Tag: vacation / -$268.00
When CC payment goes through, money is already there for that transaction, so not needed within the Budget.0 -
You can set up a budget that includes transfers from your savings account as income for budgeting purposes.
Click on Manage budget categories on the main budget page then select the savings account in the Transfers in section.
Then the cleanest way to track it would be to actually transfer the money from savings to checking and pay the expense from your checking account.QWin Premier subscription0 -
@Jim_Harman I appreciate your insight and hopefully I have this straight.
Transfers In: "From Savings"
By doing this, any transfer from Savings into Checking would be considered income to budget for that month? Which means I could scrap the Savings Goals and simply move the exact amount over from Savings to Checking (in my example above, $268). Then I could use said $268 to budget my Travel category & categorize the $268 CC transaction as such in my register. Do I have this right? If so, I'm going to breathe a sigh of relief and do this right away.
Thanks again, Jim.0 -
Yes that sounds right.
Please post back if you have further questions.QWin Premier subscription-1 -
In addition to the transfers from Savings when you need the cash, I would also add the money already earmarked in Savings Goals to your budget's Vacation category as "Rollover from last month/year".
To do so, click the January column's Balance field in the Vacation category to open the popup shown above. Click Edit (where this picture shows Reset) and enter your $268 amount. Save.
Enter how much you want to budget every month where 50.00 is showing in the picture. Click the gear icon on the left to "apply January budget forward to the end of the year.
Enable "Rollover" by clicking the double arrow icon so that leftover amounts roll forward to the next months.
Your actual vacation expenses, if correctly categorized to Vacation, will appear in the Actual fields of the month where you went on vacation, reducing the rollover Balance.
Repeat for all other categories that are / were Savings Goals.1 -
One more question using the Vacation category as an example.
I created the rollovers in January. We have $2000 in Vacation. Entered the transaction for $268 in January, where the charge occurred. I did not budget money in that month, as the $2000 is for the year. Now, I have a red $0 under Allocated Budget, $1732 left under Budget Status, and the main Travel category has a red bar with $268, as well as a red $0. If there was rollover money to be used, why is Quicken indicating this is overspending? It's even telling me I have overspending on the top bar (spending/budget/savings.) If I had the money set aside for something, then I am not overspent. Why does Quicken say I have? Just because I didn't budget money for the category that month? That would defeat the purpose of having the rollover.0
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