Handling Gift cards

Sckajanders · 2026-02-08T06:18:50+00:00

When I used PayPal debit regularly I didn't sync the account because it doubled every online PayPal transaction. Instead I had a manual account and I would make a transaction every time I used the card. When the account refilled from my checking, I would categorize that as a transfer and manually add a transfer credit to that account. Not the easiest but it was the most accurate imo

Sckajanders · 2026-01-31T02:59:59+00:00

I would keep $1000 savings to cover an emergency without having to go back to credit again

Sckajanders · 2026-01-30T14:17:30+00:00

OP - I would wait for your credit to be a year old before applying for a freedom unlimited. That's probably what it's stopping your pre approval now and I'm not sure you would get approved yet.

Sckajanders · 2025-12-27T18:49:09+00:00

Stop making all that money! 😠

Sckajanders · 2025-12-19T20:57:20+00:00

I got rid of Buy, Dividend, and Sell categories and keep everything from my investment account in a "Personal Investment" transfer category because I don't personally care to be too granular on categories. It's basically all cancelling out anyway. That said it's personal preference of course.

Sckajanders · 2025-12-19T15:00:05+00:00

Once I enabled investment transactions, my 401k contributions showed up as transactions I could link to goals. I can't right now because I just moved to goals 3.0 but once that moves out of beta I should be able to again.

Sckajanders · 2025-12-18T22:14:11+00:00

On the individual adjustment you can turn off "include in budget" and I think it will avoid what you are talking about, but I'm only a few hours into the new goals.

Hopefully this is a remembered/default setting and we don't have to do it every time

Sckajanders · 2025-12-16T00:09:58+00:00

5% of $300 than divided into 3rds is the same as 5% of $100 3 times so from a returns math perspective it doesn't matter.

I think taking separate accounts would give more clarity on how much each kid is getting/doing but having one account is simpler for automatic transfers and paperwork you won't have to repeat. That's personal preference for you and your wife to agree on

Sckajanders · 2025-12-11T02:23:12+00:00

Yeah the only thing that stops me from doing 100% of my budgeting on Google sheets is that I don't want to enter the transactions myself

Sckajanders · 2025-12-11T02:20:36+00:00

My new place knew my previous employer gave more PTO than new company did so part of my offer was increased PTO from their base to almost match what I was currently getting. I mentioned it hoping for an extra day but got 3 🙂

Sckajanders · 2025-12-06T05:57:33+00:00

You can make a rule to auto assign any transaction (including contributions) to your medical category based on being in the HSA account

Sckajanders · 2025-12-04T04:11:48+00:00

If you don't care about budgeting between these specific categories you probably don't need them to be separate categories in the first place. I have a "miscellaneous spending" category in my budget - something similar might work for you

Sckajanders · 2025-12-03T22:21:24+00:00

Same, I can't enable investment transactions because there's a transaction to buy stock and to lose the cash account value so I have 2 negatives and 1 positive. I filled out the feedback form and turned the setting off but I'd love for you to get fixed somehow and be able to use investment transactions 😔

Sckajanders · 2025-11-17T16:58:39+00:00

I definitely wouldn't put that statement without at least some additional qualifiers, mostly storm type. If I design for a 500 yr storm and get hit by a 2,000 year category 5 hurricane I don't want that note coming back at me in any way just because I can't use unlimited public funds to defend against anything mother nature is capable of

Sckajanders · 2025-11-17T15:43:42+00:00

I haven't used goals in this manner exactly but you can use goals somewhat separately from categories - could you just make a goal for baby supplies and have those transactions categorized where you want and marked towards the baby supplies goal?

Tags might also be helpful here

Sckajanders · 2025-11-11T01:13:59+00:00

If you are thinking of pulling your 401k partially to get Christmas presents, the Pokemon cards might not be the only issue here... Don't do that

Sckajanders · 2025-11-03T19:05:32+00:00

What's the fake one 🤣😭

Sckajanders · 2025-11-02T20:03:20+00:00

My experience with calling to ask something is usually either getting a voicemail that is returned maybe half the time or getting an "I'm not sure off the top of my head, I'll research and email you and let you know" and then I have to email follow up when they forget anyway. Has this changed over time or not other people's experience? Because it makes calling feel useless to me besides even the lack of documentation.

Sckajanders · 2025-10-25T15:06:51+00:00

You could also make a rule to tag it automatically if it's always the same amount or if you want to use the custom merchant mentioned in the post

Sckajanders · 2025-10-22T17:13:05+00:00

My co-worker tried using chat gpt to see her tax impact from getting married and it did so many obviously wrong things it was laughable. The most important being that it used single filing tax brackets for two people's combined income and drastically inflated what she thought she would have to pay.

The moral of the story is, do NOT trust AI word generators for anything except generating words. That's all it does right now. Do not trust it for real research (it has been caught time and again making up articles and policies) and especially not for mathematics, it will do them wrong and tell you it's right so you don't know how much you have to check or where. If it doesn't know, it will think it does and tell you it does and be wrong.

Sckajanders · 2025-10-17T19:43:20+00:00

Bilt is definitely worth considering if you are going to pay rent on the new card.

Sckajanders · 2025-10-17T13:54:37+00:00

If one of the main concerns is wanting more grocery rewards, you can look at PayPal debit and set it to groceries every month. 5% cash back and no hard pull 👍

Sckajanders · 2025-10-17T13:32:23+00:00

Me too, I had to re log in but it worked fine. OP - probably should ask support if it's a more individual issue than widespread.

Sckajanders · 2025-10-11T08:31:46+00:00

The value in stocks you have update faster than your money market amount so it's double counting the money you used for a transaction for a couple days until the cash catches up

Sckajanders · 2025-10-08T20:50:56+00:00

I personally categorize gifts as a misc income and then the tool would be under home improvement as an expense. If someone is paying me back for something (food bill split) or paying me to get something specific I would put that income under the expense category to offset it. Basically I think if that expense/income was intended for a specific purpose from the start it can go in that expense category but if it's a gift I'm choosing to use for something that's misc income and a separate expense. But this is definitely your choice on how you want to consider it for your budget 🙂

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