Savings Goals

[RelapsingCertainly]

Hello! I was recently using Monekin and, I realized that there was a huge missing feature that would really improve quality of life for alot of people (at least people that are very analytical about their money). Currently, it's not possible to set a goal in app to work towards.
Humans are goal oriented after all so it would help with people actually saving money and not just spending it on random stuff (and eventually regret it lol). It would help because you would no longer need to download another app like Greenstash to set goals and stuff.
So I propose that there is a new page or card that allows the user to set and see goals (for example, have $500 in a "Emergency Fund" savings account")

How I imagine it
User fields:

• Goal Name
• Goal Amount
• Linked Account
• Category (if multiple goals are linked to 1 savings account, optional)
• Due Date (this could give u a "you need to save $amountOfMoney per month to reach this goal, optional)

[enrique-lozano]

Hello @RelapsingCertainly! Thank you very much for posting this suggestion. I had the idea of implementing goals in the app but I never got around to taking the step because I don't really know exactly what requirements would be best. I didn't know about the goals app you shared, so thank you very much for the contribution :)

To start with, I was unsure whether to have the user manually enter deposits to the goal or directly use the transactions that the user creates in the app. I think the latter is the best option although it would be possible to implement both at the same time.

If we directly use the transactions that the user creates in the app, which I think makes the most sense, we now have two options. Either the transactions created based on filters are automatically used (as happens with budgets) or when creating a transaction you can choose which goal it is directed to.

Again, I think both options could be implemented and this time it would make more sense. The great Cashew app already does it

I think linking a goal to a single account would be the majority use case, but I don't think it makes sense to limit it. I would put the option to be able to use multiple accounts within a goal, as I said before, in a similar way to how budgets work.

If you think about it, in the end a goal is like a budget in reverse, I can barely think of few differences. In a budget you don't want to go over a certain amount X and in the goal you want to reach a certain amount X, but in essence it's the same. I even think we could unify all this functionality and use the same screens and forms that we have in the budgets but for the goals.

There is still a lot to improve as far as budgets are concerned, so I think this would be a great addition to this whole part.

Please let me know what do you think 👀

[RelapsingCertainly]

I do like the idea but there are a few potential aspects that should be flushed out.

1. If there are multiple goals liked to a account, how would priorities work? Would the user get a total allocatable amount and they would have to split it up? Or would it be automated? I.e. earlier goal gets the money until complete. (Maybe using tags? to help allocate from the transactions themselves)
2. How would withdrawals/expenses affect the goal?
3. Will the goals be a new card or will be like the budgets where it's just another screen (side note, budgets should have a card to encourage budgeting)

I have used Firefly III before and they way their goals work is, it just takes the balance of the linked account of a goal(s) and tells the user "hey, you have $50 or -$50 to allocate" and the user is expected to allocate the money themselves. In my experience, it works pretty well.

[enrique-lozano]

Hey! I will try to answer what I can:

1. I may not understand your idea well but for me the goals should be completely independent. That is, if we have two goals for the same account:

• "Goal A": Save 500$ for a new Camera
• "Goal B": Save $1000 for a trip

If we have an income of 250$, we will display "250$ (50%) to save blablabla" on Goal A and "750$ (75%) to save..." on Goal B. I think that we should display all the goals of an account in a list inside the accounts details or something like that.

2. From my point of view, yes, expenses should affect goals, and if the user does not want that, he can always change this behavior with the filters we mentioned (by categories, labels...). In this way, unwanted transactions will not be taken into account in the goal. There is also the option I mentioned before of only taking into account the transactions that the user specifies manually. Perhaps a more problematic issue is whether we should take into account transfers between accounts when calculating what part of the objective you have met.

3. As I mentioned before, for goals linked to a single account it might be a good idea to have them on the account details page as well. Beyond that, yes, they should have their own page where they are all listed as well as their details page, just like budgets. We should also add cards in the home tab as well for both budgets and goals

Regarding this point:

I have used Firefly III before and they way their goals work is, it just takes the balance of the linked account of a goal(s) and tells the user "hey, you have $50 or -$50 to allocate" and the user is expected to allocate the money themselves. In my experience, it works pretty well.

Firefly III uses a completely different behavior that I explain here before:

To start with, I was unsure whether to have the user manually enter deposits to the goal or directly use the transactions that the user creates in the app

In Firefly III, the first option is used (manually enter deposits or withdrawals to the goal). This is a very different approach and I think that in our case it makes sense to directly use the transactions already created by the user (as happens with budgets), but I think that any option is perfectly valid and we would have to study carefully which one is better. In any case, we can use links from the goal-details page that auto-complete the transaction to add so that it applies to the goal.

As you can see, there are many things to take into account here, and since I don't know what is best for the user, I have never developed this part 😅

[enrique-lozano]

It is also worth noting that the option implemented by Firefly III is much simpler, as it removes all the filtering by categories, tags, etc. that we were discussing. Since the goals are completely separate from the rest of the app, a lot of complexity is eliminated. Transactions created in the app would not affect the goals at all, and this is perhaps the part that I am least convinced by. I think that, as I have said before, I personally like the Cashew option better, where the app transactions are used, but once again, we have to see what is best for the majority of users.