Savings Goal Heavy Lifting (A Just-For-Fun Post)

DannyB

How do you use the Savings Goal feature?

1. To save for a onetime expense (down payment for [item], major purchase (89" QLED UHD TV), etc.
2. To save for unplanned expenses.
3. To save for a non-monthly recurring expense (property tax, insurance premium, auto tags, etc.).
4. To have a pool of funds for non-monthly recurring flexible expenses (birthday/anniversary/holiday gifting, auto/home maintenance & repair, etc.).
5. 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

1. 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.
2. The amount of each transfer is equal to one twelfth of what is needed/planned for the year to cover the designated expenses.
3. 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.)
4. 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.
5. 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.)
6. 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.)
7. 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.

RobWilk

Primarily (3) non-monthly one-time expenses. In particular, in my case, I maintain one savings goal for the Disney Annual Pass (due in February→April time frame, due in April but i think can be renewed 60 days earlier).

Ultimately, what i do with it is just hold the money aside so i don't withdraw it from savings. I have the money for at least several years annual passes, but I want to make sure I hold the money aside.

I might have one or two other savings goals as well, but it's the same idea with them.

-Rob

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/46398#Comment_46398

My sister and niece used to buy annual passes to Disneyland (Anaheim Park). I grew up about 30 miles from the original Disneyland and was 3 years old when it opened in 1955, the year I made my first visit to Disneyland. We frequented the Park several times a year right up until I went on active duty in "71. A trip to Disneyland was a sure-fire date during high school. My oldest daughter and her family just got back from a 3-day trip to Disneyland/Disney California Adventure.

RobWilk

Looks like that general area may be burning tonight.. At least the L.A. area which I believe is near there.

DannyB

Deleted, off topic.

SRC54

I fear I don't use them at all. Whatever I have left over each month goes to Savings. The higher residue each month, the more I won the month. I tend to win most months. December wasn't a great month with presents and new tires, but I still managed to save. I leave what is leftover in my account until I am ready to move it to a HYIA or to invest it.

However, I am trying out the Retirement Planner just for fun pretending we are not retired. I will have more to say about that at some point I am sure.

I agree that non-monthly, annual or semi annual expenses is an area where Simplifi could improve. I haven't come up with any solution. I've tried different things. I just presently have the whole thing (car insurance, house insurance, new tires) just come out of my monthly Spending Plan. I try to stagger them as much as I can. Insurance is May/November, tires was January.

KP_9

Great post, thanks for sharing your experience, @DannyB. Savings Goals (will shorthand them to SGs henceforth) are actually my favorite feature of Simplifi - I rely on them more than the budget-centric features like the Spending Plan and use them for every # case you describe above.

For years, I had my savings divvied up into separate savings accounts tied to categories of expenses (Capital One has long promoted this strategy and makes it very easy to create & nickname separate saving accounts). I had an account for an emergency fund, another for reserving enough funds to cover bills like insurance premiums/taxes, one for holidays & gift-giving, one for travel, one for a house down payment, etc. For years, this strategy helped me not only keep organized, but also majorly boost my savings rate & motivation once I started seeing everything allocated out to individual expected expenses and was forced to acknowledge how much more I'd need for each rather than be lulled into complacency by viewing my goals though the lens of the larger combined balance number.

Now that Simplifi's SGs can finally link to investment accounts (thank goodness), I've adapted my strategy: I consolidated a lot of those smaller savings accounts into a single brokerage, enabling me to make smarter investment decisions that align to my short- and long-term savings priorities without losing the ability to break everything out into allocated buckets. Now, each "bucket" is simply a virtually-overlayed SG; I have dozens of SGs that help me mentally divvy up that single brokerage into the categories & specific expenses I'm anticipating, both short- and long-term.

Some SGs exist Completed in perpetuity to just reserve an amount (e.g. Emergency Fund), others are anticipated one time expenses that get closed out once complete (e.g. Chimney Repair or New Table Saw), and yet others are annual buckets for ongoing/routine spending (e.g. Taxes '24, Taxes '25, Auto Insurance '25, Travel '25, Travel '26, etc). The functionality's versatile enough to work for any type and I use them all.

I also usually estimate savings needs high, so it's extra rewarding when an expense comes in below what I've allocated and the excess funds left in that SG can be repurposed to make faster progress on another. 😊

Specific to the "heavy lifting" use cases you describe above, #3 & #4, I've found the annualized strategy works for me to make sure I'm setting enough aside for these upcoming expenses: i.e. Taxes '24, Taxes '25, Auto Maintenance '24, Auto Maintenance '25, etc. That said, I'm not sure how nicely SG's play with the Spending Plan - Quicken may have some work to do to ensure that spending toward your Auto Maintenance '24 SG would be treated as planned spending and not completely blow a particular month's budget. I could see how that might be a headache for users who strictly manage their Spending Plans (I don't - my Simplifi use is more SG-centric than Spending Plan-centric). Perhaps a user could mark when they're ready to spend down an SG and that SG balance could auto-populate a one-time Spending Plan line item for that month (or over multiple months)? Would need to look at this more.

One enhancement I'd love to eventually see is the ability to tie specific transactions to an SG and have it automatically deduct as spent. I recently had to do a home repair that involved multiple progress payments to the contractor and I'd have loved if I could have tagged each payment to my Foundation Repair SG and have it auto-deduct the amount as spent toward the goal rather than manually entering in the amounts as deductions each time. Opening the Goal would then show all transactions that were spent toward it, useful for historical tracking.

Also 100% agreed on wanting an Annual option for the Spending Plan - many of my expenses fluctuate month to month and rather than stressing about being over one month and under the next, I'd much rather track a trending average against a total budget for a year.

All that said, long live Savings Goals! They are simple but powerful and my personal favorite feature in Simplifi.

Cheers, K.

DannyB

Yes, @KP_9 long live Savings Goals!

Great usage of SGs. Thanks for sharing.