How do you use the Savings Goal feature?
- To save for a onetime expense (down payment for [item], major purchase (89" QLED UHD TV), etc.
- To save for unplanned expenses.
- To save for a non-monthly recurring expense (property tax, insurance premium, auto tags, etc.).
- To have a pool of funds for non-monthly recurring flexible expenses (birthday/anniversary/holiday gifting, auto/home maintenance & repair, etc.).
- Whatever else anyone can find a use for an SG.
#1 and #2 are quite simply what the SG feature is built for and require minimal effort beyond the monthly contribution and when the goal amount is reached, making the big purchase, taking the big trip, fulfilling the big wish.
#3, #4 and perhaps #5 are the "heavy lifting" reference in the Discussion Title.
From the start, I found that, as wonderful as Quicken Simplifi is, there was no mechanism for including non-monthly routine expenses that doesn't throw the monthly focused Spending Plan into 😯😬😱 in the months one of those non-monthly expenses occurs even though the money is actually available to cover them.
As a result, I and others turned to the Savings Goal feature, asking this feature that is designed to help us save for the big one-time expense to also do the heavy lifting of making sure funds are available to cover non-monthly recurring expenses, whether fixed or flexible, though keeping them apparently outside of the actual Spending Plan and for me this feels less than satisfying.
Yes, last year the Product Team added a rollover feature to Planned Spending, so there is that. But, this feature, while useful for certain flexible expenses is still not, for me, adequate to handle most of my non-monthly recurring expenses. And so, I am back to using SGs to handle non-monthly fixed and most irregular flexible expenses.
Here is my current workaround for keeping track of the minutia of SG funds and SG related transactions and why I call it "heavy lifting."
I have three active SGs. By "active" I mean the funds in these SGs are used routinely throughout the year (#3 & #4 above).
- Annual Fixed SG
- Annual Flexible SG
- Travel SG
- The funds for each of these SGs are held in three separate savings accounts with automatic transfers set up to move cash from my checking account to each of these saving accounts on a set day of each month.
- The amount of each transfer is equal to one twelfth of what is needed/planned for the year to cover the designated expenses.
- Once the transfers are completed, I go into the SG section of my Spending Plan and make the contributions for each account including the interest that has been paid since the last contribution. As a result, the balance of each account is equal to the balance of the corresponding SG and each account shows $0.00 available in the accounts list. (There is a feature request to automate connecting transfers and SG contributions currently under review by the Product Team.)
- Each of these SGs also has a credit card "assigned" to it. For example, all travel expenses are charged to one particular credit card, and that particular credit card is used exclusively for travel expenses. So, I have a "Travel" credit card, a "Fixed Expense' credit card, and a "Flexible Expense" credit card.
- All transactions against these credit card accounts are marked to be excluded from the Spending Plan and Reports. This is where the "felt less than satisfying" mentioned above comes in. It feels like marking them to be excluded excludes these planned expenses, but indeed they are not excluded since I include the monthly SG contribution in my monthly SP. (There is a feature request to develop a way to streamline this process also.)
- When there is a balance on one of these credit cards and it comes time to pay the piper, I make the payment directly from the corresponding savings account and make a "withdrawal to spend on goal" from the SG in Simplifi. Keeping the "available" in each of these saving accounts at $0.00 is how I make sure everything is covered. (There is a feature request to automatically mark a transaction as excluded when it is assigned to an SG and to automatically reduce the balance of the SG accordingly.)
- The exception to charging all expenses to a credit card is related to Fixed Expenses. A couple of my annual fixed expenses charge a fee if paid with a credit card. In these instances, I make a direct ACH payment out of the savings account. When the transaction is complete, I simply make the adjustment in the SG via a "withdrawal to spend on goal."
If you've read this far, WOW! I'm going to include some "notes" if you want to keep going.
- I don't know if the Product Team is working on a means to better handle annual/non-monthly expenses within the Spending Plan or as a separate but connected feature. It seems like a "glaring" issue to me, but I'm just one person.
- The process I've described above works for me… for the most part. It's a little cumbersome and is definitely a workaround.
- Why I don't use the Planned Spending rollover feature to handle my non-monthly expenses:
- There is no way to track just exactly where the rolled over funds reside in my real-world accounts. I suppose they reside in my main cash account, but so does all my "left at end of month" funds. With a SG I can see exactly how much of my account balance is designated for that SG, not so with rolled over funds.
- There is no way to separate which rolled over cash is for which rollover category. Yes, you may have funds for several SGs in one account, but Simplifi gives you a means to see what funds in each account belong to which SG, not so with the rollover money.
- The one exception for using a Planned Spending with rollover turned on is for "Gifting." I have a rollover enabled Planned Spending category for our annual gifting expenses. This money stays in our checking account and remains available throughout the year. We have birthdays in 9 out of the 12 months so gift buying is a continuous process pretty much year 'round and the rollover feature works particularly well for this application.
- Right now, there is no best way to include annual/semi-annual fixed and flexible expenses in the Spending plan and I have found using the Savings Goal/credit card process described above works best for me to make sure these expenses are accounted for in my Spending Plan via included monthly SG contributions.
My Conclusion: I would like to see an Annual Expense Spending Plan that follows the same basic design of the monthly Spending Plan that somehow integrates into the monthly Spending Plan. What that would look like and how it would work is beyond me, but I'm confident someone at Quicken can figure it out.
