23 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. Using Hold for Next Month will ensure that the funds are no longer available to budget in the current month but can still be allocated to the budget in any subsequent month. This will be particularly useful for those who are looking to stop living paycheck to paycheck and instead gradually get one month ahead i.e. living on last month's income rather than this month's.
    2. We find the best way to track your money is rooted in something called envelope budgeting. Instead of predicting how much you'll make and spend and trying to reconcile that with what actually happened, envelope budgeting embraces real income as the source of your budget instead. This means you can only budget money that you already have. You can think of categories as little funds that you deposit money into. Combined with our rollover system, it provides an intuitive way to handle a lot of things that come up in life. And you know it's always accurately depicting your finances — there's no made up numbers.
    1. YNAB expects you to put your money into budgets based on whatever money comes in. But that's not how Firefly III works. Firefly III works the other way around. At the start of the month, you decide what you want to spend. If everything is OK, your budget should at least match what you earn. So that's easy. But if everything is better than OK, you budget less than you make, and you save the rest. You can use the rest of the money to fill piggy banks or donate to me (kidding ;)).

      But that's really not so different from Actual Budget approach!

      At the start of the month, you decide what you want to spend. If everything is OK, your budget should at least match what you earn. So that's easy.

      Same. Every dollar coming in has a purpose.

      But if everything is better than OK, you budget less than you make, and you save the rest.

      Same. The only difference is that you explicitly decide (or change your budget after you realize you have extra -- this is allowed and encouraged) that the purpose for the "remaining dollars" is "savings". Seems the same to me.

  2. May 2026
  3. Mar 2024
    1. The other budgeting tool is the Spending Plan. Most of it flows out of transactions you’ve imported and categorized. This tool takes your income after bills, subscriptions, transfers, and savings are deducted, and subtracts planned spending, which can be one-time purchases or monthly expenses that fluctuate, like groceries and gas.
    1. I tried Simplifi a little bit more and I agree: their budgeting feature does not make sense to me. They separate bills and subscriptions from the spending plan, making it impossible to see every planned expense against my projected income. It also doesn’t offer an easy way to cover overspending by transferring available money from other categories.
    2. It seems better now but I don't like how it you can't easily roll with the punches if you go over something. It's not as easy as taking from another category and applying the funds you can only increase the current category. So you don't really know how much you have to spend.
  4. Oct 2023
  5. Jan 2023
    1. Kakeibo (Japanese: 家計 簿, Hepburn: kakei-bo), is a Japanese saving method. The word "kakeibo" can be translated as Household ledger and is literally meant for household financial management. Kakeibos vary in structure, but the basic idea is the same. At the beginning of the month, the kakeibo writes down the income and necessary expenses for the beginning month and decides some kind of savings target. The user then records their own expenses on a daily basis, which are added together first at the end of the week and later at the end of the month. At the end of the month, a summary of the month's spending is written in kakeibo. In addition to expenses and income, thoughts and observations are written in kakeibo with the aim of raising awareness of one's own consumption.[1] Kakeibo can be a finished book or self-made.

      There are some interesting parallels with kakeibo and note taking methods. Some have used envelopes to save away their notes in a similar sort of structure.

      Link to https://hyp.is/RVP-plQaEe2t_7Pt7pyTgA/www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary<br /> Historian Keith Thomas used envelopes for storing/maintaining his notes

  6. Jan 2022
  7. Mar 2020
  8. Dec 2019
  9. Mar 2019