How many / what bank account “buckets” do you use?

[nurseir]

@bonniekilburn We use a spreadsheet, because we're old so predate Scott Pape's buckets.

We have 15 categories that we track in our budget each month.

• Investment
• Kid
• Beauty
• Medical
• Car
• Car Buying
• Clothes
• Gifts
• Holidays
• House
• Investment Property
• Groceries
• Entertainment
• Transport
• Cash Buffer (basically a formula that sweeps up any overflows)

More complex than some, but this has helped some of those relationship debates about "You spend too much on clothes, those 'savings' were meant for Christmas Gifts".

 

[sinaloapaisa]

@nurseir Just wondering, don't you just buy everything from one transaction account with the debit/credit card? Or do you manually transfer the purchase amount from each bucket before you buy each time?

 

[nurseir]

@sinaloapaisa All cash sitting in a single offset account, separated by a spreadsheet automatically each month.

Twice a month we review spending, and categorise (which updated the running totals automatically).

 

[brighteyes1530]

@nurseir If you haven’t, take the raw vendor names into another sheet with your categorizations and do a remove duplicates, then do a vlookup to that sheet from the banks csv export. Means you only end up with a couple of uncategorised to chase down each month and the rest populate automatically unless the vendor changes their payment processor.

 

[frostwoman]

@nurseir Are these all seperate accounts?

 

[nurseir]

@frostwoman All cash sitting in a single offset account, separated by a spreadsheet automatically each month.

 

[josh328]

@bonniekilburn I have 25 Offset Accounts. Every major spending category and future fund has its own bucket.

Some are savings, some are for scheduled bills, others are for education/holidays, plus a dedicated emergency fund.

During the month, we run everything through the credit card and then pay the balance in full on the due date.

 

[certifica12]

@josh328 Jesus that sounds cumbersome and a hassle.