Weekly, Percentage Based, and Unlimited Savings Goals

JMoney
JMoney Member ✭
edited December 18 in Feedback

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.

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