Rollover unused Spending Plan money [edited] (10 Merged Votes)
Comments
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[removed] has it all, better than mint. I’m just afraid of taking a chance on such a new company. I was hoping Quicken can get it together….but seems not.
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@Bishop The app you mentioned was particularly bad in terms of cash flow and scheduling recurring reminders when I tried it, that was my main purpose for using an app like QS. That app was totally useless for me. And the worst part of that app is after I canceled my subscription, I found out they were still accessing my financial data for like a month or more until I contacted their support. I haven't tried it in over 6-9 months, it's possible they changed since then but i doubt it.
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Rob Wilkens0 -
I find it quite funny that you come to the thread that is about how people want this functionality, disagree with them, and tell them that it won't help them achieve their goals. You post as if you know better than they do how to achieve their goals. You don't even know what their goal is, so how can you know how to achieve it. Maybe their goal is only to not spend more than a certain amount in a year on a specific category of transaction and they would like to have a running total of this category. Would the idea in your post work for this goal? Nope!
Believe it or not, people have different ways of doing things and rollover is one of those ways - as evidenced by this entire thread, so maybe believe it this time and quit posting like you have a new formula for success that we the plebs can't understand.
We all have preferences and you are free to have yours, but facts are facts and in this case your statement quoted above is just obviously wrong. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
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Then what happens to that $100 you didn't spend in the first month? It doesn't just vanish.
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It goes into savings/saving goals. The idea isn't to spend all your money.
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Rob Wilkens1 -
Spending everything in the groceries budget doesn't mean I didn't save anything. That's what monthly contributions to savings goals are for. I don't need whatever little extra from groceries to go towards that as well. I'd rather be able to simply keep it allocated for groceries so I don't have to artificially force all of my spending to fit neatly into one month chunks. Just because the previous month ended on Wednesday and I didn't get groceries until Saturday doesn't mean I should lose $250 worth of groceries and force my family to starve this month to not go over the budget.
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the problem with this and many other apps is that everything is using months, which is an arbitrary measure of duration. it may seem simple but this creates a ton of problems.
your budget resets on the 1st, and you spend down your plan. it assumes your income and expenses are the same every month, but this is not how real life works. some people are paid every 2 weeks. others get bonuses. retirees get dividend payments. property taxes. thanksgiving/holiday groceries are higher than usual. tons of things give you discounts if you pay annually instead of monthly.
in the end, you have to manually fix everything every month to make it work. for some people, this is a good thing, as it forces a manual review. for others, it defeats the purpose because they want an automated solution.
personal finance is personal. what works for one may not work for another.
i'm excited to try the new rollovers, but i suspect it still won't work with how i like to view my finances. just give me a bucket (it's not a savings goal, subscription, bill, whatever, all of which carry some meaning), that accepts both income and expenses. remove any time element from it, because it's arbitrary. and then you can use that to project your spending as necessary. sound familar? yes, it's like the projected cash flow. instead of by per account, make that per category/tag. if it's an recurring expense, your goal is to keep it near $0 over time. if it's savings, your goal is to grow $ over time.
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There was another idea post on custom date ranges for the spending plan... vote on that.. i cannot link as on mobile and at a theme park now
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Rob Wilkens0 -
Hey everyone, please see our announcement for the new Planned Spending Rollover feature!
Does this meet everyone's needs as far as rollover in the Spending Plan goes?
-Coach Natalie
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Hi Natalie, am an early access user but can’t see the feature yet to try it. Hopefully, it will turn on in my account very soon.
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Same here, I'll keep checking, I'm excited to try it out!
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Hi - I have early access turned on (for a while already) but don't yet see the Rollover option. Is there an ETA when all the early access users will have it enabled? (I'm trying to be patient, don't worry :) )
Thanks!
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Natalie - I'll let you know next month after a real rollover but so far, looks great! Nice UI, clear to set up, opt-in for existing budgets.
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Hopefully, the feature will be released before end of month so we can experience how it works. I have early access turned on, but still waiting for the update to arrive.
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Same here!
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You're right about the arbitrary time aspect. What is a month for anyway? Does our budgeting period need to be (roughly) aligned with the duration of a moon's phases? Not really.
But, at the same time it's an easy reference for people. It's easy to think about spending $1000 a month on groceries a month, than it is to think about a daily ($33) or yearly ($12,000) version of that spend, or indeed no duration and just allocating some amount that comes in via income. I think the monthly amounts give people time to adjust their spending within a timeframe that's actionable, which I think helps people meet their spending goals. I know it helps me, at least.
As you say, it's personal. I think the implementation allows for flexibility to meet most people's needs.
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It also makes more sense for some to budget monthly than for others. Certain expenses recur monthly (mortgage/rent for example) and some jobs pay once or twice a month. But some don't (I had a job years ago that paid every two weeks) and not every expense / budget item fits neatly in monthly increments. That's what's nice about having flexibility to budget the way that works for us.
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The "release funds available for spending" is not exactly solving the specific use case. I agree with the folks who are saying its okay but it's not great. The problem is that the minute you release something and make it available for spending elsewhere, then it does not remain tied to the category that you had assigned it to. These are two completely different use cases.
- If you thought you needed $50 for gifts this month and you ended up not needing it, in that case it is a good thing that you can release the money and spend it on something else. For this situation, the feature is working well.
- BUT… When it comes to regular expenses that are frequent but inconsistent - such as putting gas in my car - I fill it up when it is empty, so this falls on different days of the month and sometimes more in one month than another, but you still want to be able to roughyl estimate how much you spend in a month on average. If your gas budget is $100 per month and this month you spend $80 then you should be able to conserve the remaining $20 and keep it within the gas budget category and roll it over so that next month you now have $120 since you probably will need to fill up twice given that you underspent in the previous month. Mint had this down perfectly, I cant understand why you guys struggle with it.
- Final use case relates to certain expenses that dont come up every month, but which you would like to be able to budget for so you don't have to feel the burn in one single month when the expense is due (think of it like saving up for something). As an example - I pay my car insurance for the year upfront because it is cheaper that way. This expense is due every March but it is a big one, like $1000. I can't afford to gauge $1000 out of my March budget because it will skew everything else. What I need to do is be able to stash away $83 per month from each of my budgets leading up to March, and then when that expenses occurs and I assign it to the car insurance category, then the system whoudl be smart enough to know that I didn't spend $1000 in March, it was acutally $83 that I spent from this month, and the rest of it had been saved up all year to get to that point. Again, Mint had this use case totally dialled in and I don't know why you can't so it too. This is literally the definition of "budgeting".
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If you have early access active, you should see the rollover feature soon. I just got it activated, the feature is being rolled out in stages.
Simplifi User Since Nov 2023
Minter 2014-2023
Questionable Excel before 2014 to present
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Hey everyone, we are anticipating that Rollover will be released to 100% of Early Access by the end of the week. 😁
-Coach Natalie
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Thanks! I finally have access to it :)
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I have access to it now. However, this is a feature I will not use. IF I overspend a month, it is fine but would like my spending limits to be the same month to month. I am glad it was not turned on by default.
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I got back from vacation to see that I have access to it now. Knew it was not going to be perfect for everyone out of the gate, but its basically how I personally wanted it to work.
For those who don't see it yet, its a toggle you can set on each spending category to roll over each month the outstanding positive or negative balance. I had many categories I did not have in planned spending purely because my usage was so sporadic it became meaningless (I budget those areas annually not monthly). But with rollover I can now include them and aim for zeroing out by the end of the year, or adjust my next budget if they don't.
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I would be happier to have the ability to move any unused budget funds, from any category, to the total balance (or to an overspent budget item) for the current month, so I have a better idea of my overall success for any given month.
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@Willowbei IF you want just a one month "overall success" then you probably don't want to use roll-over. Roll-over involves bringing money from previous months, which would not really give you an idea how you did -that- month.
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Rob Wilkens0 -
@Willowbei what you are describing if I'm understanding what you are describing is already very much a part of the Q-Simplifi Spending Plan.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
So I'm going to throw this into the conversation thread for clarification's sake…
"Add Budget/Spending Plan "Start each new month with the previous month's leftover amount" option."
I understand THIS feature request as something different from the rollover feature the is being currently rolled out for Planned Spending.
I read this feature request as that there be an option to rollover UNSPENT LEFT AT END OF MONTH funds form month-to-month.
Example:
January 2024: $1736.40 left at end of month. This amount represents money NOT spent in January 2024 and only in January, after all income, expenses (fixed (Bills & Subscriptions) and flexible (Planned Spending), transfers, and savings goals contributions.
This feature if implemented would allow me to start my February Spending Plan with $1736.40 BEFORE adding my February expected income. Let's say my monthly income is $5000.00. If I opted to use this feature as described by @jhirasaki (November 2019, edited May 2022) then my February "Income" would be $6736.40 ($1736.40 "rolled over" from January surplus + $5000.00 February expected recurring income).
If I'm reading this correctly, this is completely different from the ability to rollover funds (negative or positive) in a specific Planned Spending category. The Planned Spending rollover feature has been created and is being rolled out. The "Start each new month with previous month's leftover amount" (the topic of this thread) option is marked as "In Progress."
OK, just wanted to see if I'm understanding what this actual feature request is about.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
I think it would be most effective to allow the rollover amounts to affect the “planned spending” and “available” amounts in the spending plan. Otherwise. Rollovers are hard to account for. At least give the option to include rollover amounts in spending plans and reports.
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This feature is currently live for early access users, which can be enabled by anyone in Settings.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
the rollover amounts do not currently affect the dollar amounts available or the planned spending amount. For example if you have a negative rollover amount of $100 in the grocery category. It will not reduce your overall spending plan or the amount available that month. Makes it hard to account for the overall amounts. At least we need to have the option.
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