I’ve been looking for software to help me organise my saving (or medium-term budgeting, if you prefer), and so far I haven’t seen anything that does what I want. Maybe one of the three people still reading (hi mum!) might have some idea?

My problem is that I’m trying to save for a bunch of different things that sit on different timescales: I need the cost of a ticket to New Zealand by mid-year, the cost of a ticket to Greece every few months, a trickle into a fund for gadgets,1 a trickle into a long-term savings fund, and so on.2 These things also have different priorities: I need the NZ ticket by the deadline, the gadget fund should only get its trickle if everything else is up-to-date, and so on.

I’ve done some looking around, and found plenty of budgeting apps based on the envelope system. They’re all about making sure the essentials get paid for: you divide your pay-check into envelopes for different purposes (groceries, cigarette fund, helicopters, whatever) and pay everything out of its own envelope (so the helicopters don’t come at the expense of groceries). But my problem is: How do I decide how much to put in the envelopes?3

My dream solution would let me set different kinds of savings targets:

  • I need €x on this date (saving for New Zealand).
  • I need €x every so-and-so days/weeks/months (saving for miscellaneous travel).
  • I want x% of my deposits earmarked for … (general saving).
  • … but with a priority (gadgets: low priority) and a maximum (gadgets again) or a minimum (general savings).

Obviously I want it to track these targets, with some encouraging feedback (30% of the way to a ticket to New Zealand; miscellaneous travel should have €150 in it by now but only has €37, that kind of thing).

Then when I have something to deposit I want to try out “scenarios”:

  • How much will each fixed-amount target have accumulated in six months?
  • When will I reach €x given the current settings?
  • If I start with €x every month, how much ends up in the percentage-based targets?
  • If I pay off this fixed-amount target right now, how do the others adjust?
  • How should I assign my monthly savings, given the priorities on the various targets? Can I even meet all my minimum requirements, or should I be putting more of my paycheck into savings?

And ideally (let’s not aim too low), I’d like all this in an app available for both android and iphone, since Olga has pretty much the same problem.4

So how about it — anyone know anything coming even remotely close?

Notes:

  1. I’ve got a broken helicopter to fix, and this ornithopter looks awfully tempting… [↪]
  2. I just got surprised by the yearly tax roundup. Not much money if I’d been saving for it for even a few months, but of course I wasn’t. [↪]
  3. Put another way: these apps are designed to keep track of spending, whereas I want to plan my saving. [↪]
  4. I was briefly tempted by the thought of writing something myself for android. Only briefly, though. [↪]