How to track savings separately from spending
Short answer: money you move to a savings account or investment should be logged as a savings transfer, not an expense. Logged as an expense, it makes the month look expensive, blows your budget and hides your real savings rate.
1. What goes wrong when savings count as spending
Say you earn 3,000, move 500 to savings and spend 2,000. Your real spending is 2,000. Log the 500 as an expense and it looks like you spent 2,500 and saved nothing, which makes it harder to see where to cut back.
2. The rule
Think of your money in three buckets.
- Income: salary, allowance, refunds
- Expenses: food, cafe, transport, rent — money actually spent
- Savings: transfers to savings, deposits or investments — excluded from expenses
- Month result = income − expenses − savings
3. Your savings rate
Savings rate is savings ÷ income. In the example, 500 ÷ 3,000 ≈ 17%. You only get this number, and can compare it month to month, when savings are logged separately.
4. In Coinjot
Coinjot leaves savings transfers out of your expense total and shows them as savings in the monthly summary. Income, expenses and savings sit on one screen, and budgets are measured against real spending only.
Set the month to start on payday, and let repeating records log a monthly savings transfer automatically.
Saving money should never look like spending it
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