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Savings Goals should add back to the Spending Plan when used (2 Merged Votes)

rayhooker

Currently I can create a savings goal that will allow me to reduce the amount available in my spending plan based on an expected contribution. That is good because I can make sure I set the money aside, but the problem comes I "use" the funds. Logically if to contribute reduces the money in my spending plan, then it should add back to the spending plan when used. So whether this is for a big expenditure or some goal, I would think it best to:

Add those expenses to the spending plan (e.g., vacation or yearly property tax)
Match those with the funds pulled out of savings.
Right now even if I release the funds in an account, unless I put those funds in an external account not in the spending plan there is no way to recognize their use. A way to do this would be to have a savings goal register that reflects in the spending plan based on month in which the adjustment occurs.

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Spending Plan

Feature Request

Savings Goals

Status: Active

Comments

Coach Natalie

Hello @rayhooker,

Thanks for posting this to the Community!

I have gone ahead and turned this into an Idea post so that other Users can vote on it. Please be sure to add your vote as well!

-Coach Natalie

SPICYSMOM

Great idea - this takes the savings goal full circle.

BillPayer

I would like to see the Saving Goal transactions to manage contributing to and taking from these goals.

Bennett Burt

Simplifi should integrate goal withdrawals into the spending plan so that any goal withdrawals can show as "income" in the spending plan. Without this, any time you spend money from savings (i.e. a goal withdrawal), it looks like you way overspend on your spending plan. For example, say you save $1,000 for a vacation over the course of 3 months, and then spend the money in Month 4. If you spend the $1,000 and categorize it all appropriately, it will look like you blew your spending plan. BUT if the goal withdrawal showed up as income in Month 4, then you would know you were right on track.

TLDR - we need a way for goal withdrawals to show up as income in spending plan.

Coach Blake

Bennett Burt,

That is a great suggestion! I can see the importance of a feature like that, thank you for bringing it up. It gets my vote!

-Coach Blake

Juan

Yes that is a good suggestion. Furthermore withdrawals or additions from goals need to show up in the reports especially net income or some new goal report. I went on vacation and spent $2,000 that was not relected in my normal spending plan for that month. I withdrew money from my saving goal to cover the extra vacation $2k. However this transaction does not show up in any reports especially net income. When time passes and i forget what i did to cover $2k vaca in that month and i run net income report it will shows i’ve spent more than i brought in. Withdrawal and additions into goals are not accounted well in simplifi.

Rocky Raccoon

Would love to see something along this line. Seems like a glaring omission that doesn't simplify a spending plan.

bklimes

I feel this is a major missed item in the Spending Plan and Savings Goal section. A lot of the budgeting tools/teaching material over the years has taught people to save small amounts over a set period for a big purchase which is accounted for in the Savings Goal. Great, but the goal is to then use that money on what you were saving it for, not to just keep it in a goal. Yes, you can withdraw the money manually, but then how do you track it?

The product owner should have seen this idea in the last 16 months it was posted and prioritized this to give better value to their customers. Right now, I don't see myself going past the trial on this system as it doesn't do anything different then another free system I'm already using.

Alison

I would LOVE to have this! I'm doing it all manually now and ignoring spending from reports/spending plans which means I can lose track of it.

Joe Buck

I also agree that we need a feature like this. Just withdrawing money from the savings goal does not help me track the spending, and makes my spending plan look off.

RobWilk

I voted yes on this too, if i understand right, withdrawals from savings goals should affect the spending plan's "Income after bills & savings" section, and be reflected as a form of positive balance change from savings goals... i.e. it would look like more income on that calendar month

Meghan

Hello,

I would like the money withdrawn from a savings goal to be considered a positive increase or "income" in the spending plan.

Right now, when I withdraw from a saving goal, no action happens in the spending plan.

For example, I am saving for a car right now. I contribute money monthly to the spending plan. When I buy my car, I will have a transaction in my spending plan for my car purchase. I would then withdraw the money from my savings goal to cover my car purchase expenses. However, since withdrawals from a savings goal are not added to the spending plan, my spending plan for the month will be negative since I do not have the "income" from the savings goal to cover the expense.

Another example, I have an Auto Fund set up in my saving goals. I keep the balance at $1000 for this goal. Anytime I have an auto expense, such as car repair or oil change, I withdraw from the savings goal to cover the expenses. As of now, there is no way to credit money into the spending plan from my savings goals. As of now, I either have to manually add another "income" to cover the expenses or ignore the transactions in the spending plan. Neither is ideal.

I spoke to Coach Jorge about this feature. He agrees it would be a great addition.

Thanks!

Flopbot

@Megan,

Thanks for the Idea Post. Awhile back, @DannyB did a really interesting ’Survey’ of all the forum posts related to Savings Goals. You might find it interesting too.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/4089/survey-of-savings-goals-enhancement-ideas-suggestions

Regarding your specific idea, I can see what you’re talking about. When you enter the real-world transactions, they ding your current month’s Spending Plan making it appear worse than it is. As I understand it, this is by design and someone else would have to explain why…has something to do with not having the set aside funds negatively affect your Spending Plan twice - once when saved and once when spent. I don’t fully get it. However, I do know that Simplifi says we need to manually mark the ’Ignore from Spending Plan’ toggle for any transaction that is covered by a savings Goal withdrawal.

Savings Goals still have some ways to go before they’re as automated and fully integrated as many of us would like.

Until Simplifi improves the overall Savings Goal interface, here’s an approach that I’ve used with varying success. I set aside money monthly in a Savings Goal for Christmas. Then, when it comes time to spend it, I add this tag which also reminds me to mark the ’Ignore from Spending Plan’ toggle. It’s not 100% foolproof, but it has helped me remember.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031920/uploads/editor/8t/hsj8v6dg1rsd.png

[edited image to reduce size]

RobWilk

I've been looking for this - bump.

Austin@

I just started using Simplifi and I like the Spending Plan save for this! Contributing to Savings Goals works fine in the Spending Plan, but when I pull from a Savings Goal, it needs to be reflected as income in the Spending Plan to offset the unusual spending so it doesn't look like everything is way off for the month.

Jerrod

Great idea

BlankTom2.0

There should be a way to count Saving Goals withdrawals as inflow in the spending plan.

I have a savings goal setup for XMas shopping, which I withdrew $2K from. I would like to track the gifts in my planned spending, but I also want my Available balance not to be $2K less than it should be. Apparently, there's no way to do this.

The problem would be fixed if we could have Saving Goal withdrawals show up as inflow (either in income or a separate category in savings goals).

UrsulaA

From your note, I believe using the withdraw for another purpose option will get you the result you want

You can also elect to Withdraw for another purpose, which allows you to return all or part of your contribution(s) back to your spending funds. This option is great to use for changes in circumstances, where you may need some of your Goal money back. When using this option, you'll see that the funds are removed from the saved so far amount and added back to the left to save amount of the Goal.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/3676756-using-quicken-simplifi-s-savings-goals

BlankTom2.0

@UrsulaA

"When it comes to withdrawing from a Savings Goal, withdrawing to spend for the Goal will not impact the Spending Plan. However, withdrawing for another purpose will remove the funds that have been withdrawn from the Spending Plan up to the standard 'monthly contribution' amount. "

So it sounds like you can't exceed the monthly contribution amount, which doesn't really help when you're trying to withdraw the entire goal.

The workaround I'm using (As it looks like Simplifi has no plans to address this) is to do a transfer for the amount of money I'm withdrawing. You need to have two accounts, of course, to make this work but what you can do is:

Record a transfer from one account to another for the amount you are withdrawing from your goals. You can name the payee something like 'GOAL - XMAS' or whatever your goal name is to make it easy on yourself. Make sure you withdraw it from the goals first, so you have the money available to transfer.
1. You can also record a second transfer back into the original account for the same amount if you don't want to actually move the money at your bank.
By default, Simplifi will mark both the Inflow (Green) and outflow (Gray) transactions as "Exclude from Savings Plan". What you need to do is update the inflow (Green) transaction not to exclude from the savings plan.
1. It's important to only mark 1 transaction this way. If you do a transfer out and then back in, you will have two inflow (green) transactions.. Only mark the one inflow (green) transaction for the account where the money will stay.
If you do this, your spending plan will now show inflow in "Transfers and Credit Card Payments" for the goal(s) you withdrew from.

Piece of cake, right! 🤣

lexicalscope

Thanks for this suggestion! I'll try the "record transfers" as a way to pull from a Goal's savings as a way to add income to a month where I have one-off big expenses.

If there's an open feature request to automate withdrawing from a Goal so that it can count as "income" for purposes of a Spending Plan and paying off big, irregular bills/expenses, please let me know. I'd like to +1 it.

SeanTall

I've run into a significant usability issue with QS, where there's no way to "withdrawal" funds from my savings goals into my spending plan, either as an "income" or through linked transactions. Those funds just go away as far as the spending plan is concerned.

To make an easy example, say I want to save $5,000 for a car down payment. Each month I save the saved amount shows up in my spending plan, say $500. This tells me that that money is "spent" in the Spending Plan which keeps me on track and the Savings Goals section shows me how far I've come. Both great. But then the day comes that I buy a car. I pay $5,000 for a down payment. That $5,000 shows up on my spending plan this month without any way to internally transfer the funds from my savings goal fund to this purchase, so it'll look like I've spent an extra $5,000 with no additional income, trashing my spending plan. This doesn't make any sense to me. Sure I can manually withdrawal the funds in the Savings Goals section to show that I don't still have money in that goal, but that's only half of what needs to happen. That withdrawal needs to go somewhere.

It seems like I could go-around-fix this issue by selecting the "exclude from spending plan" box for that transaction, which would work okay enough for a single purchase (if a bit frustrating), but gets ugly with a multi-transaction savings goal like a vacation. To make another example, if I saved $1,000 for vacation spending, it would sure be nice to link that vacation's spending in my Spending Plan to that goal's savings. That's why I saved the money. That's why it's a savings "goal". The month(s) I spent the savings should have an income category of "vacation savings spending/withdrawal/whatever" to counteract the vacation transactions coming from that goal.

Coach Kristina

Hello @SeanTall,

Thank you for coming to the Community to share your Idea! Since there is an existing request asking for the same functionality, I merged your request with the existing Idea post.

Thank you!

SeanTall

Thanks @coachkristina, I'm new to this.

DannyB

@SeanTall As you can see by scrolling through this thread, this is a long standing discussion. Thanks for adding your own thoughts and you may have noticed they echo a number of those who posted and up voted this idea.

For my travel (think “vacation”) savings I used a separate savings account at a bank where I have a credit card geared toward travel “rewards.” I have an automatic monthly transfer set up for this account so our budgeted monthly contributions go into this account. We use this banks credit card exclusively for all our travel expenses and pay it off using this banks savings account. and all transactions on this card are excluded from our spending plan. This helps simplify the awkwardness of this “workaround” for this expense category.

Now that Simplifi has introduced a rollover feature in Planned Spending, I am experimenting with a Travel Planned Spending category that will (I think) allow me to keep all our travel expenses visible in our Spending Plan. We’ll see how it goes. One issue I already see is that the “rollover” funds show up in the planned spending category, but they are not earmarked in my accounts list the same way Savings Goals funds are. Still, Planned Spending rollover categories keep the actual expenses visible in the Spending Plan.

Jerrod

@SeanTall, when you create a savings goal, Simplifi auto-generates a tag for that goal. You have to label the relevant transactions with that tag and (to not make the spending plan look wonky when you have large expenses) you need to exclude those transactions from the spending plan while also remembering to "withdraw" from the savings plan. It would be nice if (upon tagging a transaction with the goal tag) Simplifi automatically withdrew that amount from the savings goal and added that amount to income or at least had a ledger under each savings goal showing the relevant transactions, but right now that's all we got. You can always filter on the tag to see what you've spent on transactions related to the goal.

azs0018

Please add this functionality. As many have noted already, this seems like a major oversight in the implementation of savings goals. If I am missing something, please let me know because this would be extremely helpful.

The suggested workaround of marking transactions as "Exclude from Spending Plan" works in some cases, but it does not work for split transactions. You cannot mark part of a split as excluded and not the other part(s).

For example, let's say you have a savings goal for your kid's birthday (to be used on gifts, party supplies, etc.) and you have a monthly planned spending amount set up for dog food. Then, you buy your kid's birthday gift from Amazon in the same order that you purchase food for the dog. The transaction will be split to represent the different categories. The dog food will be categorized appropriately, and counted toward planned spending. The kid's birthday gift should be covered by the funds in the savings goal.

What is more, if you intend to use Simplifi for budgeting, then hiding those expenses (especially large ones) can make balancing a budget difficult and even turn your savings into "Monopoly money." If you are excluding the transactions instead of having to track and account for them, it becomes a whole lot easier to spend the money without giving it proper consideration.

The only way it seems possible in Simplifi to count savings goal withdrawals toward the spending plan is through transfers, either real or fake.

First, you could make real transfers by having a separate account and actually transferring the funds out when you are contributing them, and then transfer them back in when you are withdrawing them. You mark the first transfer as exclude from spending plan, since Simplifi already counts the contribution against your spending plan. The second transfer gets treated like income into the spending plan. But that creates a bunch of unnecessary transfers, plus most savings accounts have limits on how many transfers you can make in a month. If you can cash flow most of the expenses, then it makes so much more sense and is so much easier to balance the transactions "on paper" rather than actually transferring the money back and forth.

Second, you could record transfers manually that didn't actually happen. You create a fake account in Simplifi, and transfer contributions into this account (again, marked as excluded), then you transfer the funds back into the original account and it looks like income. At this point we have to backup and say to ourselves, "the first half of this process seems oddly familiar… isn't this exactly what savings goals are…?" It seems like we have to go through all of these extra steps to duplicate a functionality that already exists because the extant functionality is incomplete.

Withdrawals from savings goals need to be credited to the spending plan, otherwise the savings goals functionality is incomplete.

Again, if I'm missing something, please let me know!

P.S. automated withdrawal from a savings goal (mentioned previously) would be nice, but is not necessary for what I am proposing. All I'm asking is if we could just start by having savings goal withdrawals credited to the spending plan.

DannyB

I'm not convinced that SG funds should be added back into the Spending Plan when used. But I would like to see some way to track SG spending including the ability to assign transactions to specific SGs.

azs0018

I came across another situation where "exclude from spending plan" is not a good way to treat transactions related to savings goals.

If you overspend your savings. For example, if you save $2,000 for a new lawn mower, but you spend $2,250 on it. If you exclude the transaction from spending plan, you're masking the fact that you overspent by $250, your budget looks better than reality, and you don't have to account for that money coming from somewhere else. However, if you don't hide the transaction, then your budget thinks you overspent by $2,250, which obviously is not the case and is not helpful either.

We need withdrawals from savings goals to be credits back to the spending plan.

SMSmith96

Is there a way that if we take money out of a saving goal it can go into available to spend? I feel like I get penalized for big bills that I have to save up over multiple months for