Goal Logic reversed?

[MrBiggerB]

I'm playing around with the new Budget function.
I think the logic of the goals shall be reversed. For me a goal something I can work to by saving money and put it to the side. for example i assign each month from my income 10% to the saving categorie. this shows up in my budget in the activities as +. so to balance this with my goal, the budget must be actually negative. or in otherways, goals are budgets which get reduced from the avaiable amount.
now when i reach my goal i have more money avaiable.
Maybe I misunderstand the whole function.

Any thoughts?

[letehaha]

Hey @MrBiggerB, thanks for trying it out!

I think it's more of a mental model mismatch than reversed logic tbh. In MoneyMatter's budgeting (I followed the same approach other envelope budgets implement it, to not reinvent things), "putting money aside" is the assignment itself – you assign e.g. 10% of income to the Savings line each month, and that money sits in the line's Available and keeps rolling over. No transaction is needed for that. For example if you have budgeted your expenses for $5000, but you actually spent $4500, that $500 (10%) will just be available to be assigned to the Savings line – no transaction needed. Shortly – no income transactions used to "fulfill the goal". The goal is fullfilled by allocating money for the period and spending more – the leftover is your savings.

Activity is meant for real money movement (spending, or income categorized into a line). So if you assign to Savings and also record the 10% as a "+" transaction in that category, the same money gets counted twice.

For a savings target, the "Reach balance" goal is the one you want – it tracks the line's Available, and once it hits the target the goal is marked as achieved and stops asking you to fund it. If you then want that money back for other lines, just lower the assigned amount and it returns to Ready to Assign.

Docs with examples for each goal type: https://docs.moneymatter.app/budgeting/goals/

Could you share how exactly that "+" activity appears in your case?

1. Is it an income transaction categorized as Savings, or a transfer to a savings account?
2. Is that savings account included in the budget or not?

That'll help me understand whether there's a real gap on the app's side. Let me know 🙏

---

There's also a separate "Financial Goals" feature under development that might suit you better once it arrives – it will track both positive and negative activity, with more flexible conditions like "track 10% of account's income into the goal's bucket", and so on. The exact list of conditions isn't specified yet tho, so I can't give more examples atm. You can vote for it with your email (or anonymous ofc) here and once it will be released, you will receive an email notification.

[MrBiggerB]

Thanks for the fast feedback. I understand it better now:

your first point you have when you assign a fraction of your income to the goals categorie.

Reading your doc again more carefully ;-), I understand the differnces in approach. eg. for a car insurance of 1200 I would set a monthly budget of 100 which is adding up every month.

If I would like to buy a car, I would like to assign income to a categorie to save up to my goal.

Maybe i don't understand the idea of manully moving something to a budget.
For me a budget would work like:
Total budget sum == Avaiable income (which I want to use for the budgeting).
Budget for all planned or possible expected expenses (like repairs) expenses
Savings dynamicly or perodically assigned amounts (I think the financle goals is in this direction like you said, but i should be integrated in the budgets)

Free cash (to spend on what ever i want) = budget Sum - budgets - savings.

I will later try to make a more detailed description.

[letehaha]

Yeah, what you describe is basically zero-based budgeting – total budget == available income, every bit of it gets a job, and whatever is left is free cash. Funny fact: it's already built, just hidden for now. Budgets were released very recently, so I kept the first version scoped down and will enable the zero-based part in one of the upcoming releases. With it on, your income automatically lands in a "Ready to Assign" pool, you hand it out to lines (expenses, savings, etc), and the "Keep Ready to Assign at 0" option nags you until everything is assigned.

Rules like "10% of income" won't be there at first tho – amounts are fixed. You can still get close by assigning a fixed amount "From now on", so it repeats every period. But just FYI and keep in mind: the main focus of MoneyMatter is planning and tracking expenses, not budgeting as such, so I can't promise budgeting as rich as some budget-first apps have – it might be not possible due to the core mindset of the app, or I simply won't have a capacity.

What already works today:

1. Car insurance – add a line for it with a Yearly goal of 1200 and the due date. It will tell you to put ~100 aside each period and track the progress.
2. Repairs – create a "Repairs" line with your repairs category and assign e.g. 100 "From now on". Rollover is "Carry surplus" by default, so whatever you don't spend stays in the line and its Available grows every period. So it will add +100 month over month, so spending $500 someday in the future won't look like "unexpected big expense" – you will see it as a budgeted expense (or overspent 😄 , depends on your case). If you don't want it to grow forever, add a "Refill up to" goal.
3. Saving for a car – a line with a "Reach a balance" goal works now. It doesn't support the percentage of income, but that's the only limitation that exists now. But as I mentioned, financial Goals will probably fit this even better once released: you pick the accounts where the money actually sits (savings account, liquid investments etc.) and the goal tracks the progress from their balances, no transfers or assignments needed.

Looking forward to the detailed description too !

[MrBiggerB]

Good too hear. I'm exited where this will all go. Was using Firefly before, but the managing of the new transactions was horrible. also i didn't like that you could make sub categories. Also not realy the fastes.
From testing now just a few days I see great potential in your project. Thanks for all the work.