Calculated costs

[Pegasuz]

When having (large) costs, for example paying car taxes once a year, it would be nice to see how much of the monthly budget this will take. And thus how mush money we would need to set aside each month to cover the complete cost.

Another example could be: I want to buy a new smartphone every 3 years, how much money do I need to set aside each month to cover this cost.

This way you also have a "general" usage that should be the same every month and should allow you to pay for every (big) costs.

[JC5]

Mmm, that could work, maybe combined with "piggy banks", a saving-money feature that's about finished.

Let's say you want to buy expensive thing X. You could set a target date or a target period (x weeks/months/year from a certain date, repeating) so you would end up with something like you describe:

• I want to buy expensive thing X (which is € 10.000,-) and I have four years to collect it.
• Each year, I need at least € 500,- to cover taxes.
• Every three years, I need € 650,- to buy a new smart phone.

To make it useful, such a target needs fields like a target date, a repeat frequency (if relevant) and other things. Most importantly, you should be able to connect transfers (to a savings-account or another account). So, I move € 400,- to my savings account. Amongst the fields already present on this form is a field that allows me to select the target this money is intended for.

The money is automatically added and associated to the target. If you set Firefly to remind you every week/month/year about the target, the reminder will disappear for the rest of the week/month/year (this in connection with the budgeting / monthly budget you mentioned).

To fill in the car example. I need € 10.000,- in three years. This means about € 278,- every month. Firefly will remind you every month to save this amount. In three years, you should be on schedule. Firefly might even tell you you're behind or ahead of schedule.

Is this about right? Did I get what you meant?

[JC5]

Alright, so.

A piggy bank needs at least the following information:

• A name
• The savings account associated with this piggy bank.
• Amount to save (the target amount).
• Date on which we want the money (optional).
• Date we started saving (defaults to today). This + the target date is useful for advising the user how much needs to be saved every month/week/year.
• The currently saved amount is not saved in a piggy bank. See below.

To make piggy banks repeatable (to save for a new phone every three years), we need more information:

• Whether or not it repeats.
• If so, what period (every day/week/month/year)
• How long a period (x months, x years, etc).
• How often you want to be reminded (to put amount x in the piggy bank)

Then we also need new object, a kind of "piggy bank instance". It should contain the bare minimum to store repetitions and keep track of the amount therein:

• The related piggy bank.
• Start date (relates to the start date of the piggy bank, end date of piggy bank is ignored).
• End date (relates to the related piggy bank or latest repetition thereof).
• The currently saved amount. Although transfers mutate this amount the currently saved amount should not be deduced from transfers alone. A transfer connected to this piggy bank will mutate this amount but not be connected to it otherwise.

The rest of the information is taken from the piggy bank itself. Every piggy bank, repeating or not has at least one instance.

[Pegasuz]

This is indeed exactly what I mean!

Great work already!

[JC5]

Still to do: save the changes to piggy banks (added 5, removed 10, etc) so all instances will update nicely when they are recreated.