Introduction to budgetr
Derek Damron
2016-10-23
What is budgetr?
budgetr, as you might have guessed, is an R package that helps you easily create budgets.
This introductory vignette provides a brief description of the functions provided by budgetr along with some simple examples on how to construct your budget. Please refer to the function documentation for more technical information on each of these functions.
Building a Budget
budgetr makes it easy to extend your recurring monthly cash flow out over time. To do this, budgetr uses three primary abstractions:
- Items: The individual pieces that make up your budget.
- E.g. pay checks, rent, groceries
- Schedules: A collection of items that detail your cash flow.
- Budgets: A schedule that has been applied over a set period of time with a certain initial amount.
A Quick Example
Say that you’re budgeting for 2017 and you have three things that constitute your monthly budget:
- Your monthly paycheck paid on the first day of each month
- Your rent payment due on the fifth day of each month
- Your internet bill due on the fifteenth of each month
Your first step in budgeting is to create the items themselves, which you can do with the create_item function:
# Create a paycheck item
paycheck <- create_item( name = "Paycheck"
, amount = 1000
, day = "2017-01-01"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Create a rent item
rent <- create_item( name = "Rent"
, amount = -500
, day = "2017-01-05"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Create an internet item
internet <- create_item( name = "Internet"
, amount = -100
, day = "2017-01-05"
, recurring = "monthly"
)Next you need to create a schedule out of these items, which you can do with the create_schedule function:
your_schedule <- create_schedule(paycheck, rent, internet)Lastly (but not leastly!) you need to create your budget, which you can do with the create_budget function:
your_budget <- create_budget(your_schedule, start="2017-01-01", initial=1000)Let’s see what it looks like!
your_budget## budget (budgetr)
## date name amount balance
## 2017-01-01 Initial Amount 1000 1000
## 2017-01-01 Paycheck 1000 2000
## 2017-01-05 Rent -500 1500
## 2017-01-05 Internet -100 1400
## 2017-02-01 Paycheck 1000 2400
## 2017-02-05 Rent -500 1900
## 2017-02-05 Internet -100 1800
## 2017-03-01 Paycheck 1000 2800
## 2017-03-05 Rent -500 2300
## 2017-03-05 Internet -100 2200
## 2017-04-01 Paycheck 1000 3200Looks like you’re netting $400 a month, but let’s plot it out to get a visual!
plot(your_budget)
A Realistic Example
In reality we have a lot more than three items in our budget. Let’s say that we actually have the following things in our budget for the next few months:
- Paychecks on the 1st and 15th of each month
- Groceries every week
- Rent on the 5th day of each month
- Internet on the 15th of each month
- Student loan on the 23rd of each month
- Car payment on the 25th of each month
First we need to create those items:
# Paycheck items
paycheck1 <- create_item( name = "Paycheck"
, amount = 1000
, day = "2017-01-01"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
paycheck15 <- create_item( name = "Paycheck"
, amount = 1000
, day = "2017-01-15"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Grocery items
groceries <- create_item( name = "Groceries"
, amount = -100
, day = "2017-01-01"
, recurring = "weekly"
)
# Rent item
rent <- create_item( name = "Rent"
, amount = -500
, day = "2017-01-05"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Internet item
internet <- create_item( name = "Internet"
, amount = -100
, day = "2017-01-15"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Student loan item
student_loan <- create_item( name = "Student Loan"
, amount = -100
, day = "2017-01-23"
, recurring = "monthly"
)
# Car item
car <- create_item( name = "Car"
, amount = -200
, day = "2017-01-25"
, recurring = "monthly"
)It would be a pain to have to type out all of those items, so let’s use get_items to grab all of the items in our environment to create our schedule!
your_schedule <- create_schedule(get_items())We then create our budget!
your_budget <- create_budget(your_schedule, start="2017-01-01", initial=2000)
your_budget## budget (budgetr)
## date name amount balance
## 2017-01-01 Initial Amount 2000 2000
## 2017-01-01 Groceries -100 1900
## 2017-01-01 Paycheck 1000 2900
## 2017-01-05 Rent -500 2400
## 2017-01-08 Groceries -100 2300
## 2017-01-15 Groceries -100 2200
## 2017-01-15 Internet -100 2100
## 2017-01-15 Paycheck 1000 3100
## 2017-01-22 Groceries -100 3000
## 2017-01-23 Student Loan -100 2900
## 2017-01-25 Car -200 2700
## 2017-01-29 Groceries -100 2600
## 2017-02-01 Paycheck 1000 3600
## 2017-02-05 Groceries -100 3500
## 2017-02-05 Rent -500 3000
## 2017-02-12 Groceries -100 2900
## 2017-02-15 Internet -100 2800
## 2017-02-15 Paycheck 1000 3800
## 2017-02-19 Groceries -100 3700
## 2017-02-23 Student Loan -100 3600
## 2017-02-25 Car -200 3400
## 2017-02-26 Groceries -100 3300
## 2017-03-01 Paycheck 1000 4300
## 2017-03-05 Groceries -100 4200
## 2017-03-05 Rent -500 3700
## 2017-03-12 Groceries -100 3600
## 2017-03-15 Internet -100 3500
## 2017-03-15 Paycheck 1000 4500
## 2017-03-19 Groceries -100 4400
## 2017-03-23 Student Loan -100 4300
## 2017-03-25 Car -200 4100
## 2017-03-26 Groceries -100 4000
## 2017-04-01 Paycheck 1000 5000plot(your_budget)
Reusing in the future
We’ll need to recreate our budget every so often. There are several ways to do so depending on your personal preference, which include but are not limited to:
- Write an R script that you can use to recreate all of your items, schedules, and budgets when needed
- Use base R functions like
saveandsaveRDSto save a workspace with your items or to save your individual items, schedules, and budgets
Updating objects
But what if our rent goes up? It’s easy to update our rent item with the update_item function. Any arguments not specified (e.g. name) will be remain unchanged.
rent <- update_item(rent, amount=-750)We can then recreate our schedule (using the get_items() function to include all items in our current environment) and budget to see if anything substantial changed!
your_schedule <- create_schedule(get_items())
your_budget <- create_budget(your_schedule, start="2017-01-01", initial=2000)
your_budget## budget (budgetr)
## date name amount balance
## 2017-01-01 Initial Amount 2000 2000
## 2017-01-01 Groceries -100 1900
## 2017-01-01 Paycheck 1000 2900
## 2017-01-05 Rent -750 2150
## 2017-01-08 Groceries -100 2050
## 2017-01-15 Groceries -100 1950
## 2017-01-15 Internet -100 1850
## 2017-01-15 Paycheck 1000 2850
## 2017-01-22 Groceries -100 2750
## 2017-01-23 Student Loan -100 2650
## 2017-01-25 Car -200 2450
## 2017-01-29 Groceries -100 2350
## 2017-02-01 Paycheck 1000 3350
## 2017-02-05 Groceries -100 3250
## 2017-02-05 Rent -750 2500
## 2017-02-12 Groceries -100 2400
## 2017-02-15 Internet -100 2300
## 2017-02-15 Paycheck 1000 3300
## 2017-02-19 Groceries -100 3200
## 2017-02-23 Student Loan -100 3100
## 2017-02-25 Car -200 2900
## 2017-02-26 Groceries -100 2800
## 2017-03-01 Paycheck 1000 3800
## 2017-03-05 Groceries -100 3700
## 2017-03-05 Rent -750 2950
## 2017-03-12 Groceries -100 2850
## 2017-03-15 Internet -100 2750
## 2017-03-15 Paycheck 1000 3750
## 2017-03-19 Groceries -100 3650
## 2017-03-23 Student Loan -100 3550
## 2017-03-25 Car -200 3350
## 2017-03-26 Groceries -100 3250
## 2017-04-01 Paycheck 1000 4250plot(your_budget)
There are also functions to quickly update your existing schedules and budgets (e.g. for fast scenario testing):
update_schedulelets you quickly add and/or remove items from a particular schedule. For example, say that you forgot to include the deposit for a late-received Christmas present:
xmas_present <- create_item( name = "Xmas Present"
, amount = 200
, day = "2017-01-01"
)
your_schedule_updated <- update_schedule(your_schedule, add=xmas_present)update_budgetlets you quickly change the start date, the end date, and/or the initial amount. For example, say that you wanted to updateyour_budgetto apply through the end of 2017:
your_budget_2017 <- update_budget(your_budget, end="2017-12-31")
plot(your_budget_2017)