Getting Started with your Spending Plan

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Create your budget
• Creating your first Event
  • Setting the Repeat Frequency
• Setting priority
• Starting Bucket Balances
• Filling your buckets
• FAQ

Introduction

MoneyWell's spending plan is the foundation of your budget. Through the creation of events you can define your required spending. Then, however often you receive income you can Fill your buckets to transfer money from your Income Bucket(s) into the relevant expense buckets.

This article will guide you through the creation of your first events, and then the process of how to fill your buckets.

The idea of the spending plan has always been one of the most powerful features of MoneyWell. Consider spending on a car:

Expenses could include:

• Insurance (annual, $1000)
• Registration (annual, $100)
• Maintenance (annual, $500)
• Repairs (irregular, $1000)
• Tyres (every 18 months, $200)
• Fuel (weekly, $100)
• Tolls (daily, $10)

In a traditional envelope system, you'd either need an envelope (Bucket) for each expense, or a single envelope for all expenses. If you chose the single envelope, you'd have to break out a calculator or spreadsheet to manually calculate how much you need to assign for each of the expenses.

In MoneyWell, you create an event for each expense into your "Auto" bucket with the required amount over whatever period. MoneyWell will then calculate the total amount to assign to the Auto bucket every time you get paid.

We haven't changed the principle behind the spending plan, but we've completely rewritten it to ensure that it works as you'd expect, and that we can support it going forward. The legacy spending plan is still available if you have a budget which uses it. If you start a new budget, you'll be shown the new spending plan. If for some reason you want to start a new budget using the legacy spending plan, please contact support.

We hope to introduce a tool soon which will allow you to convert your legacy spending plan to the new spending plan, however that's not ready yet, so if you're using the spending plan successfully, we suggest you continue for now.

Create your budget

Before you can start creating your spending plan, you need your budget set up. MoneyWell's "New Budget Wizard" will help you get set up and create your buckets. We suggest starting with a small number of buckets to avoid getting overwhelmed and expanding them as you go. You may find it useful to log into your online banking or grabbing a few bank statements to help you identify what you spend your money on.

Creating your first event

Once you've got a budget and a selection of buckets, it's time to create your first event.

1. Switch to the "Spending Plan" tab which will currently be empty.

2. Click the "+" button to create a new event. The editor will open.

3. Give the event a descriptive name, and the amount you want to allocate
4. Select the bucket for the event. If the bucket doesn't exist, type the name of the bucket into the field, press Enter and MoneyWell will offer to create it for you.

5. Enter the date of the first occurrence of the event. If it's a non-recurring event, enter the date of the event.
6. Select the repeat frequency of the event. The initial menu will allow you to choose between ("None", "Daily", "Weekly", "Monthly", "Annually"). See the repeat frequency section below for more information on how to set the repeat frequency.
7. Click "Save" to create the event.

You've now created your first event. You'll see it appear in the list of events.

Setting the Repeat Frequency

As discussed in "Creating your first event", the "Repeat Frequency" field allows you to set how often an event occurs. The initial menu gives you the the choice between "None", "Daily", "Weekly", "Monthly" and"Annually".

None

This is for a one-off event which does not repeat.

Use this for one off events you want to save for in the future like a wedding, a deposit on a house or a child's college fund.

Daily

This is for an event which occurs every day. When selecting this frequency, you'll be asked to choose whether it occurs Every day, Every weekday or Every weekend day.

Use this for events which occur very frequently like the coffee and breakfast you buy on your way to work, the daily newspaper purchase or the toll on the way to work.

Weekly

This is for an event which occur with a weekly cadence. When selecting this frequency, you'll be able to select whether it occurs every week or less often up to every 4 weeks.

Use this for events which occur on a specific day every week, or that occur less frequently but on the same day of the week like your grocery shopping or the fee for your personal training session at the gym every 2 weeks.

Monthly

This is for an event which occurs every month. When selecting this frequency, you'll be able to select whether it occurs every month or less often up to every 18 months. You'll also be able to select which day of the month it occurs.

You can choose from the following to define when the repeat occurs

• Date: Occurs on the same date as the initial occurrence. Future occurrences will be on the same date of each month.
• First: Occurs on the first Day of the month. Day can be weekday, weekend day, or a specific day
• Second / Third / Fourth: Occurs on the second / third / fourth Day of the month. Day can be Monday - Sunday
• Last: Occurs on the last Day of the month. Day can be "Last, "Weekday", "Weekend day", or Monday - Sunday

Most common expenses will fall into this category like rent / mortgage, utility bills and entertainment subscriptions.

Annually

This is for an event which occurs every year. When selecting this frequency you'll be asked to select whether it's every year or less often up to every 3 years. You'll also be able to select which day of the month it occurs. You can choose from the following:

• Date: Occurs on the same date as the initial occurrence. Future occurrences will be on the same date of each month.
• First: Occurs on the first Day of the month. Day can be weekday, weekend day, or a specific day
• Second / Third / Fourth: Occurs on the second / third / fourth Day of the month. Day can be Monday - Sunday
• Last: Occurs on the last Day of the month. Day can be "Last, "Weekday", "Weekend day", or Monday - Sunday

This will be used for regular but infrequent bills which are paid annually like property taxes and car insurance as well as saving for events like vacations and holiday spending.

Setting priority

If you get paid more frequently than once a month, you may not have enough money after your first pay check to cover all of your events. This is normal. To ensure that you can cover your spending until your next pay check, you need to set the priority of your events.

At the top of the event list there are a number of sorting options. The default is by "Priority". This is the order MoneyWell will use to fill your events. The priority will have been set by the order you created your events initially. If it doesn't match your required order you can change it either manually, or by selecting a different sort order.

To change order manually, make sure you're in Priority order, then drag the events up and down to change their order. You can select multiple events at once to move them by bulk

To change order automatically, select the alternative sort order from the drop down list (including whether it's ascending or descending). Then, from the "Advanced" menu, select "Overwrite Plan Priority".

Starting Bucket Balances

Before you can fill your buckets you'll need two things:

1. To have added any bank accounts to MoneyWell that you want to track. See our support article here: Adding accounts.
2. To have assigned all income from those accounts to your income buckets. See our support article here: Starting Bucket Balances.

Filling your buckets

You've now created your budget, you've added all of your events and got your accounts ready. If you have money in your income bucket(s) it's time to fill your buckets.

Click the "Fill Buckets" button in the toolbar.

This will open a dialog where you can select the period you want to fill. MoneyWell will default to showing you the current period.

On the fill screen, you'll see the list of bucket to be filled along with the amount to be filled for each.

At the top of the screen is a summary which shows the available income, how much was previously filled this period along with how much is still needed. It also shows how much is set to be filled according to the current settings and how much income will be left after you click the "Fill now" button.

Each row in the list corresponds to one of your buckets to be filled, it shows the amount needed, the total budget amount, the progress towards the target (based on previous fills) and how much is set to be filled this fill. The final column is a button which shows the events which contribute to this fill.

If you want to edit the fill amount, clicking on the Events button will open a popover when you can edit whether specific events are included at all, or partially filled.

Buckets which will be fully filled will be shared green as an additional indicate. Yellow indicates that a bucket will be partially filled, while red indicates that a bucket will not be filled at all.

MoneyWell will automatically calculate how it can fill your buckets based on available income and your event priorities. If you need to make adjustments, you can do so before filling buckets.

Once you're happy, click the "Fill now" button. MoneyWell will then create the Bucket Transfers into each of the buckets, and you'll immediately see your bucket balances updated in the source list.

Now you're done.

As you spend money, remember to check that you have enough money in the relevant bucket to cover the spending, and enter the transaction into MoneyWell.

When you next get paid, enter the income transaction, assign it to the income bucket and return to the "Fill bucket" screen again to perform the next fill. MoneyWell will pick up from before and continue filling your events:

FAQ

How do I change the spending plan period to be 2-weekly / 4-weekly / the same as my pay period?

• In the legacy spending plan it was possible to change the period length, however this created a number of issues, and we often heard from people that the periods didn't align properly. We've removed this feature. Instead, just fill your buckets every time you get paid.

  Do I need to create events for income events e.g. my salary?

• No, you don't need to. MoneyWell will not automatically fill your income buckets. This needs to be done by assigning your income to the appropriate income bucket. However for completeness, or so you can see it represented, you may find it helpful to create income events.

  Can I fill a spending plan period in the future?

• Yes you can. We advise you fully fill the current period before filling any future periods. The bucket balances won't update until the period starts so be careful. While MoneyWell won't let you automatically fill buckets with the same income twice, there's nothing stopping you from manually moving that income now into a different bucket. If you do that, your Income bucket balance will drop below $0 when you reach the plan period in question and you could be spending more money than you have.

  Why does the "Fill buckets" screen say there's no income when there is money in my income bucket?

• The fill bucket screen takes into account bucket transfers for future periods. If you fill now for the month ahead, MoneyWell will prevent you from also using the same income to assign to a different period.

  Can I undo a "Fill buckets" action?

• There's no way to undo it, but you can delete the bucket transfers. Each bucket which was filled will have a Bucket Transfer. MoneyWell won't let you edit the amount, but if you delete the whole transfer, it will remove the entire fill action for that bucket and return it to your income bucket. Be careful doing this if you've already spent money.

  I get paid less than once a month, how do I fill my buckets?

• If you get paid less often than once per spending plan period, you'll probably need to be a bit careful not to spend too much in a single period to ensure it will stretch to subsequent periods. The simplest way is to probably fill multiple months at once. If you get paid every 2 months, when you get paid in January, fill your buckets for January, then immediately fill your buckets again for Feburary by jumping to the next period, however be careful as the money won't be removed from your income bucket until you reach the period in question. MoneyWell will prevent you from filling your buckets again with the same income, but you could still spend it twice or manually move it to a different bucket. Be careful not to assign the same money twice.