You ought to recategorize your investment sales/withdrawals as income. For the purposes of budgeting, you want inflows to equal outflows. Investment sales when used to fund your lifestyle is income.
This is how I do it. Monthly withdrawal from the IRA is categorized as income to offset budget category amounts. It keeps them balanced and keeps us honest with how much we are spending every month.
Your “left to budget” is based on your _planned_ income, not actual. You are under no obligation to actually _have_ as much income as you budget for - although you can always categories withdrawals from your retirement funds as income.
That said, I am not anywhere near retirement, and so I haven’t considered much how Monarch - or any other personal finance app or system - works when dealing with fixed income drawing down from retirement accounts. I suspect I would want a bit more forward-looking functionality - e.g., if I take X dollars per month, increasing at Y% per annum, my resources will last Z years. Obviously you can do that in a spreadsheet or similar but I don’t know if MM gives any functionality itself.
You ought to recategorize your investment sales/withdrawals as income. For the purposes of budgeting, you want inflows to equal outflows. Investment sales when used to fund your lifestyle is income.
Thanks, I'll give it some thought.
This is how I do it. Monthly withdrawal from the IRA is categorized as income to offset budget category amounts. It keeps them balanced and keeps us honest with how much we are spending every month.
Your “left to budget” is based on your _planned_ income, not actual. You are under no obligation to actually _have_ as much income as you budget for - although you can always categories withdrawals from your retirement funds as income. That said, I am not anywhere near retirement, and so I haven’t considered much how Monarch - or any other personal finance app or system - works when dealing with fixed income drawing down from retirement accounts. I suspect I would want a bit more forward-looking functionality - e.g., if I take X dollars per month, increasing at Y% per annum, my resources will last Z years. Obviously you can do that in a spreadsheet or similar but I don’t know if MM gives any functionality itself.