Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Wayne Bird]

I'm just beginning to learn Gnucash.  My previous finance/budget method has been the envelope system -- categorizing all monies in my various checking and savings accounts and either depositing money or withdrawing money from these categories.  Now that I'm using Gnucash, I've created asset, income, expense accounts, etc.  Currently all my expense accounts are zero since I've just set them up.  My asset accounts, i.e., checking and savings, have my current balances in them.  However, some of those monies have to be allocated to a retirement account.  How do I set up a retirement account that shows how much I have in that account, but the money is actually in my savings account?  A similar question would be how to set up an account for saving for a car or some other large purchased item?

I hope all that makes sense and thanks for your help.

Wayne