Help with budgeting and viewing my monthly budget

Amanza
Amanza Member
edited November 26 in Using the Spending Plan

I have read a lot about Spending Plan. It seems I need to go through all my expenses and then identify them as a bill to get them to show up. But what about electric bills that vary monthly based on the season? Or same for gas bills? Do I have to set 12 recurring gas bills, one for each month, to account for seasonality and to view this I have to click through each month on at a time? This seems way harder than it should be, so I figure I may be missing something.

For the full bedget or spending plan, can I see the monthly budget or spending plan for all 12 months by category for the upcoming year and alter them as needed? I would like to be able to plan ahead by seeing my budget (or spending plan) by month for the year and set spending to vary each month based on weekly, monthy, semi-annual, annual, etc costs and account for inflation.

Monarch currently has an easy to set and view budget but I have not figured it out here so I hope i am just missing something.

Comments

  • UrsulaA
    UrsulaA Superuser ✭✭✭✭

    Simplifi allows to move forward in the spending plan for 12 months by clicking the arrows on top of the spending plan.

    There is an idea post for viewing the budget for the year. Vote for it if interested.

    Annual Planned Spending or other options besides Monthly [edited] (2 Merged Votes) — Simplifi

    Simplifi User Since Nov 2023

    Minter 2014-2023

    Questionable Excel before 2014 to present

  • SRC54
    SRC54 Member ✭✭✭✭

    It's not ideal, but each month after I finalized the last month, I go through my bills in the new monthly Spending Plan and update them. For example, I noticed my Gas Bill estimated at $30 per month. That's for summer it will be $100 this month and $150 at least next two months unless we have a mild winter. I also find a few things I can skip.

    Yep, you can just schedule your power bills annually and have 12 of them. Even when I used Quicken Classic and you had more options, it still didn't work out too well, and now on top of that, last year's bill won't help too much since the prices have gone up. Alabama Power had 3 rate increases for 2024! I am sure Alagasco will have another one any minute now.

    Yep, I think seeing a yearly budget might be useful too.

    Steve
    Quicken Simplifi (Safari & iOS) Since 2021
    Quicken Classic (MacOS) Since 2009
    Microsoft Money (Windows) 1991-2009
    Dollars & Cents (DOS) 1987-1991

  • Flopbot
    Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Amanza ,

    I filtered my transactions by the correct Payee name and then figured out the yearly average. That number became the amount used for my Recurring Series. Then, wherever I could, I attached the Biller in the Recurring Series so that Simplifi automatically updates the Spending Plan with the correct amount. This is usually done far enough out into the month that I don’t even notice it.

    Chris
    Spreadsheet user since forever.
    Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
    Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.