Designing a Spending Plan

Choosing Your Buckets

In MoneyWell, buckets are used for tracking where you spend your money. If you've ever heard of or used the manual envelope system where you cash your paycheck and divide your money up into labeled envelopes, this is very similar.

You will track your income using the green buckets under the INCOME heading and your expenses using the blue buckets under the EXPENSE heading. MoneyWell offers a list of default buckets. If you create a MoneyWell document from scratch, the program will offer to set up these buckets for you. You can also add the defaults buckets at anytime to any document by using the Set Up Defaults... command in the Activities menu.

Once you have a set of buckets, you can personalize them. To add a new bucket, click the Action menu (gear symbol with downward triangle) and choose New Bucket. Give the bucket a name and choose the type to be "Income" or "Expense" and click Add.

To remove a bucket, select it and click Delete in the toolbar.

To change the name, memo, or type of bucket, select it and change any of these properties on the Bucket Detail at the right side of the window.

There's not one perfect set of buckets for everyone. Some people need more detailed tracking and, therefore, more buckets. Others can get by with broader strokes and have fewer buckets. Just make sure you have enough buckets so you can easily set a planned spending amount for each.

The only bucket you shouldn't have is a "miscellaneous" bucket. This is a dangerous catch-all category and should be avoided. If you really feel you need this bucket, make sure the monthly plan amount is very low (less than $40).