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Writing 3 min read

Introducing: savings, goals and the wishlist

Why Money Diary keeps three things apart: a savings ledger that moves real money, goals that count withdrawals too, and an uncommitted wishlist.

Zain Haroon — Full-stack Engineer

The Money Diary dashboard — account cards, net balance beside an income-vs-spending chart, and wealth tiles for savings, goals, wishlist and net worth.

“Saving” covers three different activities. Moving money somewhere you won’t touch it. Making progress toward something you’ve decided to buy. Wanting a thing you haven’t committed to yet. Money Diary gives each of them its own feature, and the dashboard shows all three side by side in the Wealth row.

Savings: deposits and withdrawals

Savings is a ledger of movements rather than a label you slap on a transaction. You log a deposit when money goes into a savings pool and a withdrawal when it comes back out.

Every deposit and withdrawal links to a payment account, and that link is what keeps your balances real. Save 5,000 from your Meezan card and the card drops by 5,000. Withdraw it later and the card goes back up. The money moved pockets; it didn’t appear or disappear.

The dashboard’s savings figure is net for the range you’re viewing: deposits minus withdrawals. Money you pulled back out doesn’t sit there inflating the number.

Fastest way to log one: tell the assistant put 15,000 from salary into savings. The Analytics page also has a Log savings shortcut on the month-end account list, with a To savings button beside each account.

The Money Diary dashboard — colour-coded account cards, a net balance figure beside an income-vs-spending chart, and wealth tiles for savings, goals, wishlist and net worth.
The Wealth row reads straight from the savings ledger and the goal math.

Spending from savings takes two entries

If the laptop fund actually buys the laptop, log both halves:

  1. A savings withdrawal, moving the money back to the account it came from.
  2. An expense for the laptop itself.

Only the expense reaches your spending charts. A withdrawal on its own is invisible to them, so you’d end up with a laptop and a month that claims you spent nothing. Phrase it to the assistant as both steps and it files them together.

Goals count what actually happened

A goal is a target amount with a progress bar, and an optional deadline. The progress number adds up two things:

  • whatever you declared as already saved when you created the goal, and
  • the net of savings entries linked to that goal, so deposits move it up and withdrawals move it back down.

Put 3,000 in and take 1,000 out and the bar shows 2,000. The dashboard tile shows your combined progress across active goals as a percentage, and Analytics breaks it out with the count and rupee total, like 2 active, PKR 102,000 saved.

Create one from the goals page or say it out loud to the assistant: add a goal to save 500k for a laptop by December. Link later deposits to the goal and the bar moves on its own.

The wishlist is for undecided wanting

A wishlist item is a thing you want and its price. No plan, no funding, no deadline. AirPods you’re eyeing, a game that went on sale, the keyboard you don’t need.

A goal has money moving toward it. A wishlist item is a decision you haven’t made yet. Mix the two and the goal fills up with impulse items and stops meaning anything.

Add items in one line (add AirPods to my wishlist), leave them there, and when you commit to one, promote it to a goal and start funding it.

How the three add up

Net worth on the dashboard is your account balances plus the savings ledger. Goal progress comes from the linked deposits. The wishlist tile keeps your unfunded wants in view beside them. Log honestly in one place and the other two stay correct without any bookkeeping on your side.