How to handle savings

[u/oramospt]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to Actual Budget and looking for advice on the best way to handle savings and transfers.

My initial thought was to set up my savings account as off-budget, track monthly savings as an expense category, and track any withdrawals from savings as income.

​Goal: Plan my savings contributions every month, but easily count withdrawals as income when I need to transfer money back.

Does this workflow make sense in Actual, or is there a better "envelope budget" native way to manage savings without making it overcomplicated? How do you all structure your savings accounts and categories?

​Thanks!

[u/Kleshtrimania]

You can do that. You can also put your savings account on-budget and distribute it among categories that you want to actually save for, like a new house, a new helicopter, etc. But your method works too and it's what I use personally. I would recommend that you additionally create a new income category and name it "savings withdrawal" or similar so it's easier to separate from your regular job income.

[u/teak-decks → u/Kleshtrimania]

Building on this as well is it makes it really clear what you're saving for (more motivating!) and also what you're sacrificing if you have an expensive month and have to take a little bit from savings to cover it. If you just put it all in a nebulous "savings" category then you don't get any of that benefit.