Best Of

To the folks at QS, this conversation might not be happening if there were no bugs, registers were accurate and messages like below did not appear.

I get this message below but what am I supposed to do with "Incomplete" which I see at the Portfolio tab, Total Gain info box? Shouldn't the syncing accounts fill in the Total Cost? I don't want to manually update my Total Cost, especially in fear of creating other issues in the register like this one.

So consider where to spend your resources, that might ultimately impact customers annual fees: Create a Simple/Complete Transaction feature, or fix the bugs. If data syncing were 100% accurate and bug free, I'd vote to fix the bugs, but if that was an insurmountable task due to inconsistency and lack of control over the different institutions method of categorizations, then maybe the "Simple Transaction" Investment, new feature, is better for users and a more cost effective way of creating a bug free experience.

Thanks for listening.

@DannyB My bank doesn't seem to always be "ready" when I wake up, but the time they are "ready" (have properly processed cleared transactions) can vary anywhere between 6am and 11am. For that bank, though, I set it to always refresh. Another bank which can be problematic was downgraded to daily.

Introduction

Currently the savings goal functionality seems very basic, and I'm struggling to create a goal that will accurately reflect what I'm doing or wanting to do. The lack of flexibility makes getting started a little more difficult than it needs to be. I've grouped these three ideas together because they're all related and can be combined together as way to better support long, short, and sometimes poorly defined goals. It's not always necessary that the goal be completely specified, as in a total goal amount. Sometimes, just setting aside money on a schedule or as available is a great way to start making progress.

Weekly Savings Goals

I am paid weekly, and I like to contribute to my Roth IRA weekly on a specific day (not payday). Because of how the weekdays overlay months, some months I get paid and contribute more than others, but the only option I have in Simplifi is to keep the amount the same each month. I know I could make a repeating transaction that is weekly, but that doesn't match up with the goal amount which would fluctuate on a monthly budget. Ideally, I'd be able to say, I want to save/invest $X every Tuesday or something like that, so the amount is dynamic based on the contribution schedule.

Percentage Based Savings Goals

I noticed when I was looking into setting up a 401k that the contribution amounts deducted from each paycheck had to be a percentage (pre or post tax). This makes me wonder how Simplifi could better support long term goals that may not have a specific target amount in mind. One way to allow more flexibility would be to set a goal contribution based on income or paycheck amount—this would be very helpful for a wide range of people that do not have complete consistency in their income month to month or have multiple income streams (as the percentage could be based on the income bucket as a whole).

The feature here could look something like:

• I want to save X% of my income each month / week
• I want to save X% of each paycheck (This ties nicely into the recurring income transactions that are forecasted and recorded automatically when received)

Unlimited Savings Goals

One of the biggest reasons I'm struggling to use the existing savings goal functionality to plan for a retirement goal is that sometimes the goal amount doesn't matter or is unknown. Right now I am experimenting by creating a 2024 Roth IRA Contribution goal. This is a good example of a well defined, short term retirement goal—hit the contribution limit during the calendar (or tax) year, but everything is not so cut and dry.

Franky, I don't know how much money I need to retire because I don't know what I want my retirement to look like. I don't know when, where, or how, but I do know that there is some general guidance around retirement, such as investing 10% of one's income, which is a perfectly valid goal. It would be nice if it were calculated dynamically with the same flexibility above, but I can see a simpler method would be making recurring savings goals. For example, say I want to save $X or X% each month, just like a spending goal, I could save toward a goal, have those transactions attributed automatically, and not have to set up the goal in my budget every month.

Closing

Thanks for the read! I'm open to suggestions and am not trying to prescribe the implementation. Hopefully my user goals and struggles were clear, but let me know if you have and follow up questions or suggestions for how to use what is available today.

FYI in reference to when QS does a connected account update:

Your accounts will automatically refresh when you sign into Quicken Simplifi, however, Quicken Simplifi will only connect with your bank for new transactional and balance data once every 4-6 hours. (Emphasis added.)

This is from this support article:

How often does Quicken Simplifi update my accounts? | Quicken Simplifi Help Center

Just speculating here, but if your bank has not completed the overnight processing of transactions before you log in for the first time on a given day, I'm thinking you will not get the updated data you expect and will have to run and update latter that day.