<prompt> Human: As the title says, we are trying to start budgeting in order to knock out 30k of debt mostly school loans. We are using everydollar.com to put together a zero dollar budget, but not sure how to account for the cash that already sits in our accounts. We have our 1k emergency fund, but both us us have another grand sitting in our individual checking accounts. Should we just account for that as income on the initial budget? Probably a stupid question, but thanks!  <response>: Not sure about everydollar, but in a program like YNAB that makes you budget every dollar, you would have two options.Option 1. Create a new budget Item, e.g. Minimum balance or Emergency Fund and budget that money to the new category. This puts the money into the system, but takes it out of the day to day stuff. This has the advantage of making month end reconcilliation is easier, and the money is assigned to the job its doing.Option 2. Dont ask, dont tell. Simply dont tell the app about the money.This has the advantage of having the money completely disappear from the app, but the disadvantage that if the rest of the account balance is tracked month end reconcilliation forces you to repeat the lie and account for the 1,000 per account expected difference. 