# Budgeting with buckets instead of categories

> Why fitting every transaction into a category budget rarely sticks, and how savings buckets on one account, with a plan for regular take-home, do the same job with less friction.

Canonical: https://usetruenote.com/guides/buckets-instead-of-budgets

Most budgets fail the same way. You make twenty category lines, the first month a tire blows out, and the tire goes nowhere. By the third month the budget is a document you avoid.

## The shape that sticks

Two parts:

1. **A plan for regular take-home.** Each paycheck is split into groups with a share: Expenses (bills, groceries, the mortgage), Wants, and Save and invest. Lines inside the groups are the things with a fixed amount and cadence. Everyday spending is checked against the group's share, not line by line.
2. **Buckets on one savings account.** Emergencies, Vacations, Christmas, Pets, the next car. Each has its own ledger and, if you like, a target and a date. One transfer every payday carries the sum of what each bucket is due. When the tire blows, it comes out of the Car bucket; the plan is untouched.

The bank sees one savings balance. The buckets are a ledger you (or your agent) keep.

## How Truenote runs it

- The plan's lines that "fill a bucket" set what each bucket is due. A deposit to the savings account is split by what's due, the extra to an overflow bucket (Emergencies, say). Nothing to type.
- Spending charged to a bucket by a rule you approved (the vet → Pets) is recorded automatically. Anything less certain waits in a **Review** queue with a proposal; you approve, change or dismiss in one tap.
- A charge on another account that a bucket paid for is "owed from savings" until a transfer out settles it. Settle once a month, in one batch.
- A bucket at its target gets a stamp.

Agents see and write all of it: `list_buckets`, `move_between_buckets`, `record_bucket_entry`, `list_review_items`, `resolve_review_item`. "Move $500 from Emergencies to Vacations" is one sentence and one receipt.

## What goals are for, then

Goals are for the broad things funded by whole accounts (a down payment in a brokerage account, a cabin in twelve years). A bucket can carry its own target for the smaller, dated ones. Both show on the overview.