Event Based Budgeting

MoneyWell's spending plan uses events instead of a single amount per bucket to calculate your planned amounts. You can assign as many amounts as you'd like per bucket and MoneyWell will tell you what your total planned amount is for any period.

When you click Fill Buckets, MoneyWell reviews your events to see how much should be put in each bucket and presents you with a Fill Buckets panel to review and modify your fills.

Events Explained

Events are scheduled bucket transfers. When you add events and assign them to your expense buckets, you're telling MoneyWell how much money should be moved from income to expense buckets when you click Fill Buckets.

For example, your "Automobile" bucket needs to be filled with different amounts for different expenses. You may need a weekly event for filling your gas tank, another to cover oil changes every three months, and still another for new tires annually. By adding three events for these with their own amounts and repeat timings, MoneyWell can calculate a total for your budget and fill this bucket as needed.

Think about that for a moment: Instead of pulling up a spreadsheet to figure out what amount you need in each budget category, you simply enter individual events in MoneyWell. It does the rest for you.

Now think about making revisions: If all you see in your Automobile budget is a $350 monthly planned amount, it might be hard to revise that. But with events, when the price of gas goes up you only adjust the amount on the "Fill gas tank" event. MoneyWell revises your budget for you without you having to guess the monthly amount or breaking out a calculator.

Infrequent Events

There are some events that just don't recur very often. You may have an annual tax bill or want to save up for birthday or Christmas presents throughout the year. MoneyWell gives you a way to handle this.

One-Time Events

Events may also be set to occur just once. You may want to save up for a special purchase, like a trip or a new car, and want to set aside money for that event. Simply set up an event with a date and leave the repeat set to "none." MoneyWell will make sure there is money set aside for your "Wish List" bucket waiting for you to collect enough for that special purchase.

How MoneyWell calculates Fill amounts

For fills that need to calculate how many weeks are in a month, MoneyWell uses the day of the week specified in the fill recurrence rule to determine the number. For example, if the fill happens on a Friday then MoneyWell looks to see how many Fridays are in the current month to determine the count.

To learn more about repeat settings on events, read Setting Recurrence Rules.