• How to budget with accounts.

I was hoping to hear from users that budgets through multiple accounts.

I love my bullet journal and they share or encourage users to share examples of how they use the system. Would love if bunq used a blog for this kind of thing.

My idea/system for setting up budgeting could be:

Simple version:
- monthly expenses (all direct debits: incl insurances and services.)
- day to day account (card and online payments)

Medium version
- monthly expenses (all direct debits: incl insurances and services.)
- car (fuel, apk etc)
- groceries (house food)
- leisure (restaurant, cinema, etc)
- misc (cafe, magazines, iPhone cable etc etc)

Advanced version: budget everything:
- insurances (all including health and car)
- car
- eating out
- entertainment
- groceries
- travel
- health & fitness
- tv, phone & Internet
- water, gas & electricity
Etc etc

I personally like medium.
The only real reason I don’t go more granular is because I can’t automate transfers between accounts based on vendor.
I’d love that feature for at least my mortgage, fuel and groceries (where I use one vendor for the same savings category always)

I’d love to hear how you use it and if/how you deal with the added admin of moving money between accounts for that budgeting overview you want (btw I know about multiple PIN numbers and will use a pin for at least one of the category accounts)

Hoping to hear your ideas.

    Hi 👋 @Colin-Grey-Badger#57896

    I personally use an "advanced?" version of budgetting with the accounts:

    (Accounts with a } are joint accounts.)

    Daily
    This is for everyday expenses and uncategorized fun money
    Groceries}
    Just groceries
    Car}
    All car related expenses, gas, insurance, parking etc
    Home & Decoration}
    This is for decorating and saving for bigger furniture and so on, basically play money for the gf
    Electronics & Gadgets
    My favorite fun jar 🙈
    Gaming
    Xbox subscription etc and for buying games and accessories
    Clothing
    Clothing and personal care (perfumes or so)
    Mastercard
    As I can't reroute payments at the moment this is for all recurring online Mastercard payments
    Incomes
    Salary account and used for all monthly scheduled payments to flow the money to all jars.
    Personal Expenses
    Phone subscription, health insurance, auto top-up from OV-chipkaart and other personal direct debits
    Home & Utilities}
    Rent, electricity, home insurance etc
    Financial Reserves}
    Little backup, jar is used for when we get money back from the electricity and water company for instance and used whenever really needed
    Health Care Reserves
    This is basically for the 'eigen risico' and if the dentist bill ever gets over the insurance payout
    Citytrips}
    Savings jar for weekends out and citytrips
    Holidays}
    For the bigger holidays

    3 cards are used, 1 Maestro card with personal accounts(daily + random fun account), 1 Maestro with shared accounts (car & groceries), 1 Mastercard for the Mastercard account.

    To all joint accounts my GF and I both have recurring payments to fill them up monthly. So far I think this is the best setup for us.

    I have to say it took some time for the fun jars to have a good setup as you can't always measure it. For the jars like 'car' I like to put a little to much in it so after a year we automatically saved up for the annual checkup and some small fixes.

      I would go for the advanced. Don't want to make it too complicated. I do have a dedicated bank account for Netflix and 1 for the movie theater.

      For now I have:
      - General (All random expenses)
      - Food
      - Games
      - Multimedia (Books/DVDs etc.)
      - Junkbox (small stuff)
      - Clothing
      - Special days (Christmas presents etc.)
      - Electronics (I like to waste money on electronics, last thing I bought was a new printer :3)
      - Projects/hosting (For my websites)
      - Movie Theater
      - Netflix
      - Printer Ink (My new printer comes with a subscription for ink, that's kinda cool).
      - Savings accounts
      - Saving goal
      - Empty account (don't know what to do with this one yet)

      So alot of accounts, but they keep my expenses easy to track and work perfect as a budget! Really with games, I want to make sure I don't spend that much this year, so I only make sure I have 40€ per month on that account.

        I'm kind of figuring out how to set up my budgeting with multiple accounts.

        So far I have one for spendings, subscriptions, insurance, income, travel costs (public transport subscriptions and to top up my 'ov-chipkaart') and a savings goal.

        I do like to see the set up of others and I already see a lot of good ideas. Maybe I will rearrange my set up within a few months. Like the idea of an apart MasterCard-account, not sure if it suits my purposes though.

        Looking forward to see more setups for more inspiration!

          Great to see how you guys handle it. 👍🏼
          I’m just figuring out what’s the best way for me.

          So do you transfer a fixed amount to each budget-account each month and leave it there, if you don’t use it, or do you transfer it to a savings-account?

            @ptrck#57927 Agreed, great ideas. Super helpful. I’ll incorporate some of these ideas being shared.
            I just set up my first scheduled payment so that will be a very helpful “set and forget” feature for moving money around. Thank for mentioning re-routing.

            Hey Patrick, If I have excess at the end of the month I’ll send it to my savings or top up an account that needs more the next month (like for APK or if I go over on my gas/elec etc)

            I made a suggestion in this forum earlier to offer a way to transfer any money in an account on a certain date to my savings.
            A version of scheduling but with a condition instead of an amount.
            So on the 24th at midnight I transfer all excess to savings and the 25th at 09:00 I pay my salary (self employed)

            Hope it gets picked up by Bunq. :)

              8 months later

              I have quite a couple of accounts setup for budgetting, but I'm still experimenting. There's a main account, from which I do monthly transfers to budgetting accounts. These are:
              - groceries
              - direct debit
              - summer holidays
              - winter sports
              - home improvement
              - unforeseen
              - long term savings

              The ones marked with a * I'm actually still looking for a solution. I make a fixed montly transfer to these accounts, like I do with the others. What I would actually like though, is that I could fill those up to a certain balance, rather than just adding a fixed amount.

              I've posted an idea for this here: https://together.bunq.com/d/19243-scheduled-fill-up

                I have noticed that too many accounts can be too much sometimes, I'm still experimenting as well.
                A few posts above I had like 15 accounts, now only 9.
                I have:
                - General (All standard subscriptions)
                - Games (I think I will change the name to hobby)
                - Movies & Series
                - Food (I think I will change the name to groceries)
                - Debit (All payments that don't fit other categories)
                - Credit (All payments with the Travel Card, so also deposits etc.)
                - Saving (Short term saving)
                - bunq subscriptions (here I get monthly the pack income from the members, interest and pay the pack)
                - Retirement (Long term saving)

                I think these work the best for me. Maybe giving them different names, but I will slowely get there (maybe creating 1 saving goal later) :)
                Love these multiple IBANs!

                  3 years later

                  I am curious how you guys do the payments from those sub accounts? For example you have a groceries account and you make a purchase from AlbertHein with your card. Then do you transfer that much money from your groceries to main? Or how that works for you, i would love to hear :))

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