A Simple Way to Track Savings With Tiller Spreadsheets
In my first year of using Tiller, I didn’t have an easy way to see how much I saved over the past twelve months.
I don’t use a rollover method (which the Savings Budget sheet covers). Instead, I have a set amount I save each month, and then try to save more on top of that when I can.
So I fumbled around with the Transfer category in my Foundation Template, but still never quite settled on a workflow that truly worked for me.
Year two
In my second year of using Tiller, I made savings an “Expense” type. However, when I categorized the actual transfer amounts and positive deposits as savings, the total amounts were overcounted and then undercounted.
I also didn’t like seeing red and reading “cash flow negative” when I actually increased my savings and therefore exceeded my savings “budget.”
I admit most of my issues were user error. But this lead me to an elegant solution for accurately tracking my annual savings. I’ve now found a template and workflow I LOVE for very simply tracking my savings.
Using a New Transfer Category
First, I created a new transfer type called “Money Saved.”
This new “Money Saved” transfer category doesn’t get confused with my other transfer categories: money transfer, payment, and credit card payment.
And unlike those transfer types, I do not hide these “Money Saved” from reports.
I’m now better at categorizing transfers from my checking to my savings accounts, and my deposits from savings to my Roth and other saving accounts.
Adding the Yearly Insights Sheet
Next, I started using the Yearly Insights sheet. This simple Google Sheet template shows a summary of your previous year or current year-to-date earnings and spending, plus information about where you spent your money.
Now “Money Saved” has a spot in the list of my total yearly expenses by category. I can see how my savings stands up against where the rest of my money is going.
I just wanted a simple way to see the total amount and this template nails it!
How do you track savings with Tiller?
Share your savings workflow, tips, and questions here in the Tiller Community!
Morgan Green
Start Your Free Trial
Keep a clear, confident view of all your money in one place, with flexible templates, powerful privacy, and top-rated support
That is cool, Morgan. I did a similar journey with the “expense” for savings that never worked correctly. I am actually using the Live Profit & Loss Report to track Savings now. Every month it gives me a positive (we saved!) or negative (we failed!) number, and has a yearly running total. Really helps put our savings goals in perspective.
Great work. Ok, follow up and possible curve ball. Let’s say you saved $1000/month, so your MONEY SAVED will have $12,000 in it. But you had to dip into savings to buy something, let’s say $2000. So the end of the year, your net savings were $10,000. Do you use MONEY SAVED as the category with (-$2000) or do you have a different category together SAVINGS TRANSFER or something else? Just curious how you account for that. In the end, it all adds up to $10,000 but I guess what i am asking is, are you tracking the money saved vs money spent separately if that happened?
Does Yearly Insights work only for Google sheets or Excel as well? Thank. you
I’ll have to check that out! I didn’t even consider the P&L report… perhaps that’s what I’ll go with on Year 4
No, not in Excel unfortunately.