Saving money can be a challenge, especially when balancing daily expenses, debt payments, and unexpected expenses. But when you have a clear savings goal and a simple way to track it, achieving it becomes much easier. This is where a free Savings Goal Tracker comes in!
Whether you’re saving for a vacation, an emergency fund, a new gadget, or a down payment on a house, using a tracker helps you stay motivated and focused.
Savings Goal Tracker
Download Savings Goal Tracker
For: Excel 2007 or later & Excel for iPad/iPhone
What is a Savings Goal Tracker?
A Savings Goal Tracker is a tool that helps you monitor your progress toward a specific financial goal. Break your goal down into smaller, manageable steps so you can see how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go.
Easily track your savings goals
Whether you’re saving for a vacation, a new car, or an emergency fund, this Savings Goal Tracker helps you set clear goals and monitor your progress. Stay on top of your savings goals and see how your deposits add up as you get closer to each one.
“Split” your savings account deposits
The Savings Goal Tracker helps you split your savings account deposits and assign a percentage to each savings goal. This allows you to keep money for your subcategories and goals (vacation, Christmas, etc.) in one account, while keeping track of how much you set aside for each goal.
Description
This spreadsheet has very useful features to help you monitor your savings goals:
- Calculate how much to allocate to each goal based on percentages. 2. Record your deposits and withdrawals as you would in a simple account register.
- Visualize the progress of your goals with an attractive graph.
How to Use the Savings Goal Tracker
When managing a budget, a helpful technique is to consider money earmarked for savings as an expense, since saving means money comes out of your expense account. So, if you have a general budget category called Savings, or perhaps a main category called Savings with subcategories like Emergency Fund, Vacation, or Christmas, it means money is coming out of your expense account to be allocated to these specific “Savings Accounts” or “Goals.”
For example, let’s say in your spreadsheet or budgeting software you have a “Savings” category where you’ve decided to allocate about $250 per month. In the Savings Goal Tracker, you can assign a specific percentage (%) to each goal so that the $250 deposit is divided according to the priority you’ve set for your goals. You can do this with deposits, accrued interest, and even withdrawals. The instruction sheet within the spreadsheet explains how to do this.
Why isn’t it more automated? Short answer: I avoid using VBA macros in spreadsheets (for many reasons). Unlike an expense account, you probably make infrequent withdrawals and deposits to your savings account. So, manually adding two or three transactions a month is pretty straightforward. For identical recurring deposits, you can copy a row, insert it, and change the date.
How many different savings accounts do you need?
I suppose you could have a savings account, possibly a money market account (with a slightly better rate), and probably a 401(k), an IRA, a certificate of deposit, etc.
You could group all your short- and medium-term savings into one or two savings accounts. You probably maintain your retirement in a 401(k) and an IRA, and maybe have a separate account for college savings.
The point is, you probably don’t use a separate account for your vacations, Christmas, travel, furniture, a new car, a down payment on a house, and other savings goals. And that’s okay. The Savings Goal Tracker allows you to use a single savings account while tracking multiple goals.
Splits, Deposits, and Withdrawals
Are you familiar with a “Split” transaction? In Quicken, this is how you can assign a single transaction to multiple budget categories.
Think of a deposit in the Savings Goal Tracker as a “Split” transaction. Instead of simply recording the full deposit amount, you divide the amount among your different savings goals.
The interest earned can also be “split” or “allocated” to different goals. However, the interest is typically such a small amount that you might choose to allocate it to a specific goal.
Even withdrawals can be recorded as coming from multiple goals. This might be necessary if you were using the Savings Tracker to save for several irregular expenses (such as a semi-annual insurance bill, quarterly estimated taxes, Christmas, etc.) and wanted to make a single transfer to your spending account to pay for more than one expense.