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Expected/allowed spending overages? (Seasonal income)

NachoAverageCabbage

Hi all! Wanted to ask if anyone knows a good way to manage my unique situation.

I'm a student, so my income is seasonal—I earn and save money in the summer, and I spend some of those savings in the fall/spring.

What I want is a way to track expected savings burn in my Spending Plan. That is, I want to say "I can spend $x of my savings this month"; this would be treated as income, i.e. would show up as a green part of my pie chart.

Things I've tried:

Adding "planned spend" categories. Unfortunately, each planned spend only lets me select one category. Also, planned spend shows up as red in my pie chart, implying that I'm over budget when I'm not.
Adding a manual income entry. I don't like this approach, since the "dummy" income shows up in my "bills and income" section.

Does anyone else have a solution that works for seasonal income?

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Spending Plan

Budgeting

Comments

DannyB

@NachoAverageCabbage

Just brainstorming here:

I would set up two separate cash accounts at my bank:
- First one (checking or savings - probably a HYS account) to hold all my seasonal income.
- Second one (checking) as my living expense payment account.
Set up a monthly transfer from my savings account to my checking account for the amount of my monthly planned draw.
Create a recurring income series (savings account not connected to QS) or transfer series (savings account connected to QS) for this monthly deposit.

I would experiment with the savings account whether to connect it to QS or not.

If the savings account is connected QS will treat the transaction as a transfer and you will want to change the default exclusions so that this transfer is included in your Spending Plan as income. There is a trick to doing this in whether to include both sides of the transfer or only the transfer in side and leave the transfer out side excluded. I assume the transfer will show up in the "Transfers & Credit Card Payments" section on the Bills page as a positive number increasing you available for the month.

If the savings account is not connected to QS, you can simply treat the deposit transaction as recurring income that will show up in the Spending Plan on the Income page.

Again, just brainstorming but this may work for you.

DryHeat

@NachoAverageCabbage

I have a somewhat similar situation, in that I want to transfer money from an asset account to my checking account and have it treated as income (that is, show up under Income in the Spending Plan).

Note that you may have to do as @DannyB suggests and set up a savings account to make this work, but the funds will show up as Income. Here's how I set it up (I'm using fake account and category names to conceal the nature and location of my vast fortune):😂

I use two accounts, which I will call ASSET and CHECKING, and two categories: "Monthly Payout" (expense category, and "Monthly Distribution" (income category). Every month I create the following pair of transactions:

a $999 transaction in CHECKING categorized as "Monthly Distribution" that is Included in Spending Plan
a $999 transaction in ASSET categorized as "Monthly Payout" marked to Exclude from Spending Plan

The result is that the income transaction in CHECKING shows up in the Income section of the Spending Plan while the expense transaction in ASSET shows up in the Bills section but is excluded and doesn't count.

Note that these transactions are independent… they are not a transfer. That's what makes it work. If you do it as a transfer the income transaction will show up under Bills instead of Income.

NachoAverageCabbage

Thank you @DannyB and @DryHeat. I think I would ideally like to avoid having to set up real-world transfers for an on-paper scenario… I will try DryHeat's suggestion and see if it works for me!

DryHeat

@NachoAverageCabbage

My suggestion is based on there being two accounts. One has money withdrawn, the other has money deposited. Both of these transactions in Simplifi correspond to actual transactions in the real world.

If you make both transactions in the same account it might still work — I haven't gamed that out — but it will be a bit different. If the account you use is connected to a bank, you will end up with monthly transactions in the Simplifi account that have no corresponding transactions in the linked bank account. You would have to be ok with that.

If you try it, be sure to come back and let us know how it worked out for you.

DannyB

@NachoAverageCabbage

Good luck. I receive a monthly distribution from my brokerage accounts. I don't bother with connecting my brokerage accounts to QS. So when the distribution arrives in my checking account it is seen by QS as income and assigned to the Income category.

NachoAverageCabbage

OK, I was able to try out @DryHeat's solution. Works as intended for my spending plan tab. Only downside is that a new "fake" recurring entry appears in my Bills & Income tab. Would love for Simplifi to add a built-in way without needing to create dummy transactions.

Thanks everyone!

DryHeat

@NachoAverageCabbage

Only downside is that a new "fake" recurring entry appears in my Bills & Income tab.

I'm glad it's more-or-less working for you.

There is another potential downside. Assuming that, as you mentioned, you are actually holding your summer savings in your regular bank account, you will end up with numerous transactions in your Transaction Activity list that have no matching transaction in your bank. That may or may not bother you.

You could avoid that by moving your summer savings to an actual savings account and moving money on a monthly basis according to your plan. But that may not be worth the candle.