wish: A system to divide money in an account into "savings pots"

[draxil]

I'd like a system to track savings goals in HomeBank, sort of like an account within an account. I realise this is quite tricky from a design viewpoint. Essentially you could hive off pots of money within an account and add to them over time. It'd also be nice to setup savings goals for these, like I need X, and see how close to your goals you are. It'd also be nice to schedule moving money into these pots, so you can automatically: say allocate Y into a pot each month.

[Mistyk (skrzynkapanamarcina)]

Great idea, I want this too!

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

If you know or have good example, please post here :)

[draxil (draxil)]

  I know some banks (sadly not mine) offer savings pot features, often as a part of their online interface. Examples I've been able to find include:

- https://secure.ybonline.co.uk/personal/savings/everyday-instant-access-accounts/b/
- https://squirrel.me/works

Also a proprietary online budgeting app with savings goals as well:

- https://www.youneedabudget.com/features/#goaltracking

There seem to be some standalone apps for tracking savings goals as well like this iPhone app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/money-box-savings-goals/id959555672?mt=8

Lastly Quicken seems to have such a feature as well, I found this tutorial:

https://www.thebalance.com/quicken-savings-goals-tutorial-1294077

.. which shows lots of details from their implementation.

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

I think this would be really cool! I currently do this with multiple bank savings accounts, which has come to bite me back in ....
Long story short, I might have to switch banks for my savings, but setting up multiple new savings accounts in another bank and tracking them is annoying. So having this feature to divvy up the total amount into virtual pots under a single account would be quite useful.

Right now, obviously I have to make multiple separate transfers to each account use case. With savings pots, it would be nice if I could transfer a single sum to the savings accounts, and then specify (somehow) the amount for each pot.

This sort of sounds like a split transaction, but a problem with making transfers "split" into the savings pots is when the pots are changed. Since they are virtual, I don't see them needing to be tracked and memorialized like accounts. I should be free to mix them up whenever I need to. So when they are changed, what would happen to the split information attached to the transfer transaction?

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

In my last comment I was thinking that the saving pots concept would be within each account, and that they would hook into transactions somehow. I think I was looking at this the wrong way.

Watching the progress and screenshots on the budget revamp for 5.3 however, I think the saving pots needs to be a separate workflow that overlays onto your account data, similar to how (I think) the budget is. (Not having actually worked with the budget, I'm not speaking with confidence here, but my understanding it that the budget isn't part of the account transaction data, but compares against it).

Similarly, the saving pots can work with your account balances without changing the actual account information. In this separate workflow, you can assign individual "dollars/euros/etc" in your account into saving pots; it's like categories for your currency. As draxil alluded to, this is called "savings goals" by some. I found a YNAB demo showing its workflow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5w-tSAt8Qo), which shows the idea of categorizing the money you have. (Note, YNAB combines pots, budget, and transaction categories all together here, which I'm not suggesting we adopt, but just pointing to as an example)

It could even then be possible to have multiple real accounts contribute to a savings pot, which would be useful if money for a goal is spread across multiple accounts. For example, I keep a minimum balance in my main chequing account to avoid bank fees, which I consider part of my "emergency funds". However, I also have "emergency funds" in other accounts to collect interest on it. If I had an "emergency fund" savings pot, I would want it to combine and show the aggregate funds from my two (or more!) accounts. If you'd like a visual representation of this, check out this: https://youtu.be/fqbWuTtpYi8?t=23

[Maximilien Thiel (maxthiel)]

Just adding my vote for this feature.
I see draxil mentions YNAB as an example.
I think it can makes to have this as part of the whole budget.

One interesting example on how those "saving goals" have been implemented by a bank is the Pots by Monzo (https://monzo.com/blog/2017/11/20/pots).
They're like "children accounts". When moving money from your account to a pot, the value is substracted from the main account total.

[Neilla Wrencekkd (neillawrencekkd)]

This sounds like a very interesting idea, you can try Create a separate account for each savings goal: In HomeBank, you can create multiple accounts, so you can create a separate account for each savings goal. For example, if you have a goal to save for a vacation, you can create a separate account called "Vacation Savings". Besides I did so because I found this source where I read about Lightning Roulette, https://www.ezlightningroulette.com and now this game impresses me a lot, moreover, I am glad that on this source are explained the rules of the game and even the source where I could try this absolutely free.

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

The common way to save money if so do it with a saving account with interest or other real life way, and transfer regular money for this.
I have decided not to implement.