alright makes sense. Another thing I switched everything back to putting the transactions into the to_save array and doing db.put([checkbook, total] + to_save) my question is that this saves everything at once, but also it saves empty checkbook and transactions when they aren't actually being used. I dont think this is a problem with the checkbook values because only one can be displayed but i fear that there might be transactions displayed that the user didn't create. Also the way i have it currently its throwing an error saying that transaction_query is being referenced before assignment when you do the 

ctx.update = { 'transaction': transaction_query}

ways to avoid this?