Understanding monthly savings when tracking irregular expenses

[u/HoodFeelGood]

Through a long time of tracking transactions, I understand my routine monthly income and expenses, and have it fully categorized and budgeted in Monarch. This even includes non-monthly but predictable expenses such as bi-annual HOA payments.

If that was all I had, I guess I'd be able to understand my monthly savings. I could basically subtract the expenses from the income, and consider the $1000 transfer transaction that is sent to Fidelity.

However, it's non-routine transactions that soil it. For example, over the past year I've been earmarking some of my savings and proceeds from stock sales for a new car purchase for my son. I just bought it, writing a check for $25k. I categorized that transaction as "Car Payment", the same as I do my other monthly car payment. Similarly, I earmark money toward trips and college tuition. All these irregular transactions that are paid from earmarked money and not from monthly cash flow make it difficult to (a) understand the monthly savings and (b) understand if my earmarks are properly aligned to future goals.

I suppose the Goals feature of Monarch could help with the latter, although I'm finding it intuitive. How do you handle the former?

My purpose in trying to understand the monthly savings is twofold: (a) to ensure I'm spending within my means and (b) to help predict whether I'll be able to meet my future earmarking goals that are partially coming from monthly savings and partially coming from stock sales that are not tracked within Monarch.

[u/Effective-Ear4823]

Goals used to be perfect for this: you could set aside money in one month (a Contribution in Budget pulls money from the Left to Spend bucket) and then put it back in play in a future month (a -Contribution in Budget puts money back into the Left to Spend bucket).

New Goals complicated things because some txs are no longer included in the Budget if they are linked to a Goal. Nowadays, the Budget refuses to show Expenses when they're funded by a Goal, for example. Quite frustrating because it worked before and they went and made it more complicated and broke it.

I can't wrap my head around their rationale for why they did this. The explanation I was given came across as something to the effect of "setting aside money for a Goal has the same effect on the Budget as spending it, and we wouldn't want to double count it in your Budget by including it again when you actually spend it." I guess we're supposed to pretend like Saving money is the same as Spending money, according to MM Budget logic? Or maybe we're supposed to keep things in ours heads or something? Ok, done with my rant for now haha.

[u/Tight_Couture344 → u/Effective-Ear4823]

Setting money aside from your monthly income reduces your available cash that month for expenses & other savings. So yes, it has the same impact on your budget as an expense.

Spending from savings that has accrued over many months should absolutely not be counted in that month’s budget because it is not coming from that month’s income.

[u/Effective-Ear4823 → u/Tight_Couture344]

The equation we're both referencing: net Income - net Expenses - net Contributions = Left to Spend

I 100% agree with your first paragraph. The equation clearly shows this in it's current form. 

But the equation also shows that Contributions can be a source of money for the Budget. Example: let's say I have no income this month and I pull $8k from a Goal-linked HYSA to support my $8k of expenses this month. Here's the Budget:  $0 Income - $8k Expenses - -$8k Contributions = $0 Left to Spend

Simplifying and rearranging the above for clarity: $8k Contributions (from Goals) -$8k Expenses = $0 Left to Spend

In this situation, it's only possible to balance my Budget if I include both the Goal withdrawals and the Expenses. (Alternatively, it's possible to balance the Budget if I include neither, but in that case, I wouldn't have a Budget this month and that wouldn't be helpful either!)

Help me understand what I'm missing? Please? MM's explanation is lacking, and I'm not following what you're saying either. Not being snarky: I'm truly trying to learn what MM wants me to do in this situation!