Tool to save money for a hobby (not a specific purchase).

Joezappie

One of my expensive hobbies is woodworking. Every month I'd like to say I put away $100 of my paycheck to go towards woodworking. Every paycheck it adds onto a budget pool. If I want to buy a new tool, I can check how much I've "saved" since my last hobby purchase and determine if I can buy it or maybe I decide I want a smaller tool first.

This would help me from over spending on a hobby. The current spending plan doesn't seem to help with this as it would just say "don't spend over $200 a month on it" and some months I would spend close to $0. If I want a $1000 tool, it will take months to save for it but in the meantime I want other hobby purchases to affect how much I'm saving towards that tool.

I think sometimes this is considered bucket budgeting? Id also think you could allow it to go negative. If I decide to make a purchase greater than my spending pool has, then it should become negative showing me I need to save for longer to get back to a point where I can spend money on it again.

Coach Jon

Hello @Joezappie,

Thanks for reaching out! I converted your idea post into a discussion, as I believe a tool that would be useful to you already exists within Quicken Simplifi in the form of our Savings Goals feature. With Savings Goals, you can tell Quicken Simplifi what you want to save for and how much you want to save, and it will tell you what to contribute and how often. If you don't have a specific date in mind for your goal, you can choose how much to contribute, and it will tell you when you'll achieve your goal.

When electing to include your Savings Goals contributions in the Spending Plan itself, the 'monthly contribution' amount will automatically be used; however, if you end up contributing more in a given month, the extra amount will also be included in the Spending Plan. This support article goes into more detail on this feature and how it works with the Spending Plan as well: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/3676756-using-quicken-simplifi-s-savings-goals

I hope this information helps!

-Coach Jon

KP_9

Hi @Joezappie, fellow hobbyist woodworker here! There are two different features in Simplifi that I use for the savings method you describe. Choosing between them depends on both the size of the purchases and the frequency of spending.

If I plan to make regular purchases (i.e. spending down the full amount at least every 2 months), I use Spending Plan. For the last couple years, I've been tackling house renovation projects bit by bit, so I have a Spending Plan entry for "Home Improvement." The key is to have the Rollover setting turned on for that category. That way, if I only spend $50 on materials this month, the remaining amount I didn't spend rolls over and adds to next month's total. Same thing in reverse - if I overspend one month, it draws down against next month's allocation until I'm back to positive savings for future months.

This works nicely when you're drawing the full amount down at least every couple months - if you let it accumulate to a much larger balance (i.e. into the thousands), it will start to skew the monthly Spending Plan numbers too much. Say I roll over 3 months of $1k monthly Home Improvement budget in the Spending plan. By the third month it would show $3k saved up for spending that month, and Simplifi would start warning that my planned spending would outpace my income that month. For folks who carefully monitor their net income and Spending Plans, this isn't ideal. Because I consistently draw down my Home Improvement bucket at least every two months and it doesn't balloon over a long time, it usually evens itself out quickly and I can keep it as a Spending Plan item.

For less frequent purchases where I'm saving up larger sums, though, I do what @Coach Jon suggests and spin up a Savings Goal (SG). I actually have a SG named "Woodshop Upgrade" right now; I'm currently saving toward a jointer, a couple mortise chisels, and eventually replacing my little contractor table saw with a SawStop (I value my fingers). 😊 The SG lets me reserve a portion of my savings as allocated toward that goal, and I "contribute" more in chunks to that reserved bucket every month. Then whenever I want to spend down all or a portion, I just "withdraw" that much out of it. If I wanted to get really granular, I could even spin up a SG for each of those things separately and shift savings allocations around between them if I decided to reprioritize which tool I buy first. All of this is handled as a virtual bucket overlay atop your account(s), letting you mentally divvy up a lump sum of savings to its different purposes.

I also like to keep things tidy by deleting and recreating my SGs periodically rather than continuously expanding an SG to accommodate regular in and outflows, like would be the case with ongoing hobby woodworking spend. The functionality's flexible enough to serve for saving up toward a one-time specific purchase, reserving some savings in perpetuity (Emergency Fund), or even make sure I'm setting enough aside every month to have the full amount ready by the time an annual bill like Auto Insurance comes due.

For the example you describe, you could contribute the $100 every month to a "Woodworking" SG and spend portions down flexibly whenever desired, then perhaps recreate it fresh annually.

Hope this helps and good luck on your next woodworking project - I've just started on a Shaker living room set in cherry.

-KP_9

DannyB

Got nothin' to add to this feedback. But I will mention that a number of QS users have discussed and offered suggestions for Savings Goals that would help streamline the process @KP_9 describes.