Getting Setup for 2026 - A Just for Fun Post

DannyB

For 2026, I am going to give rollover feature in Planned Spend another…. spin.

Over the weekend I did some analysis of my non-monthly and thus excluded from the Spending Plan expenses in preparation for my 2026 budgeting and Spending Plan update.

I sorted out all my annual fixed expenses and my annual or non-monthly planned expenses to update how much I need to set aside monthly to cover these costs, both fixed and flexible.

In the process, I decided to add all these expenses to my Spending Plan as Planned Spend expenses creating a number of Planned Spend buckets with rollover switched on. I tried this back when rollover was first added to Planned Spend for a few of these expenses for a few months and reverted back to the Savings Goal workaround. The main reason for sticking with the SG workaround was because of the ability to see in the accounts list what part of my cash balances were designated for future expenses - this is not possible with the rollover funds in the same way.

My new setup:

I started with some minor changes and reordering of my category list to accommodate the new Planned Spend buckets I would need to add.

I added the new buckets to Planned Spend with the appropriate expense categories attached. All of my new buckets have some to-date funding set aside for future spending in existing Savings Goals and in specific bank accounts. I added the currently available for each expense to the newly created bucket as "Opening rollover" and the Target amount is naturally 1/12 of what is needed for the coming year. (I know this is November and I'm talking about 2026 expenses, but these are all "rolling targets." For example, I paid my auto insurance premium in September, and it will come due again 9/26 so that I am already two months into the 12 months savings cycle, etc.)

Once the new buckets were added to QS, my "left this month" went negative. To "fix" this, I ended the Savings Goals associated to these non-monthly expenses which eliminated the monthly contributions restoring those contribution amounts to my available for the month returning my Spending Plan to a positive cash flow for the month.

Next issue: QS sorts Planned Spend buckets alphabetically jumbling my monthly and nonmonthly Planned Spend buckets together. To sort them, I added a "prefix" to each bucket - "M" for monthly and "NM" for non-monthly/annual/semi-annual.

Example:

• M - Groceries & Household
• NM - Home & Auto Insurance

This did two things: it sorted my non-rollover my rollover buckets into separate groups, and it forced my non-rollover buckets to the top half of the list and my rollover buckets to the bottom half of the list.

Now, back to the "problem" that kept me from sticking with the Planned Spend rollover feature last year - where is the money? I transfer funds from my checking account monthly into 3 separate savings accounts. Each savings account holds the funds for specific non-monthly expenses. I will continue to make these transfers which combined, covers all these expenses and I will make payments for these expenses out of those accounts when they come due. I know that the funds in these savings accounts are designated funds and are NOT available to spend on anything else and this is the essence of what a Savings Goal does virtually.

In some instances (i.e. property tax, annual insurance premiums) the payments are made directly out of these accounts and once completed, the transaction is categorized appropriately and accounted for in my Spending Plan using the excess rolled over funds for that bucket (I hope).

In other instances, the expense will be paid for via a credit card, and I will need to make a payment from the appropriate savings account to the credit card to cover that/those expenses when they are incurred.

I know how I think this new arrangement will pan out, but I have no idea if it will pan out as I expect. Time will tell.

DryHeat

@DannyB — A few questions about your new setup…

—When you "ended" the Savings Goals, did you just withdraw the money? (It seems like you would, as those funds are now represented by the Opening Rollover amounts.)

—When you "ended" the Savings Goals, did you delete them or just leave them in the list of completed SGs? (When I deleted some SGs, it fouled up my previous monthly Spending Plans by erasing the contributions.)

BTW, I did something similar a couple of months ago because SGs just weren't working for me. I kept a couple of SGs that are annual and close to completion and I will let them die a natural death. And, sort of like you, I prefixed my new non-monthly rollover Expense Series with a "z1" "z2" and so on to order them at the bottom of the list.

DannyB

@DryHeat I considered the impact on past Spending Plans when a Savings Goal is deleted as you have pointed out.

However,

• since I don't pay any real attention to past Spending Plans, and
• since the Spending Plan is "virtual" even after a month is completed, and
• since all expenses covered by SGs remain categorized and excluded from my past SPs, and
• since there is no real impact to my actual income and expenses for past months,
• I decided to delete them.

I do have one remaining SG that is pretty much a way to stash and track my "Left at end of month" unspent and undesignated cash. I have it set up to track the monthly contribution, the goal amount is pretty high, and we do dip into to this pool if we want to splurge on something or some experience, so it's basically a never-ending goal.

Once I had my new set up in place I clicked forward through my next 12 SPs and found one of my annual expenses that I had set up as recurring which put me over budget for that month. Using Planned Spend for these expenses means I can't incorporate the fixed expenses as recurring - they have to be treated like flexible expenses in the Planned Spend section - and therefore are not visible to cash flow forecasting for whatever that may be worth.

In my thinking, this set up is still a "workaround" but perhaps a more "organic" workaround. At least the expense will be accounted for in the Spending Plan (no more disappearing them by exclusion), and I will now see the buildup of funding month-to-month toward these expenses also in the Spending Plan.

It waits to be seen how this all pans out when it comes time to pay out for any of these expenses.

DryHeat

@DannyB

I think the main difference between us is that I often refer to past Spending Plans to see how I did and to help reset my expectations for future Spending Plans. I know I could get similar information from Reports, but I do most of my financial work in Spending Plan so it's easier for me to compare apples to apples.

This works for me because I don't actually "do" anything with the "Left at end of month" funds — meaning I don't put it in a different account or contribute it to a SG or anything like that. Instead, I just look back over the months in Spending Plan to see how much excess (or occassional loss) I had.

TiggerTrainer

I created an Excel reconciliation. It is simple, but helps me to make sure all money is accounted for. On one side I have the assets and liabilities from Simplifi. On another I have the bank balances. I also have a section for savings goals. I then reconcile all savings goals, rollover spending, and current liabilities and compare to assets. It doesn't exactly account for it in Simplifi, but I then know that that money in my checking is for rollover spending and it works itself out.

I hope this helps. Maybe someday I will be able to do everything in Simplifi. They do keep improving.

DannyB

In actuality, our cost-of-living has been stable for so many years I don't really need much in the way of a planning and tracking tool. It's more of a habit/hobby for me. I could actually get along quite nicely with the free Empower (formerly Personal Capital) dashboard that includes a basic budgeting tool. My attraction to QS is the Spending Plan. It's a great tool and the design just works for me better than the traditional detailed category method used by so many others.

I have come across another product that offers a fixed and flexible set up (they offer a category-based process also, but I like the fixed and flexible method). It's a bit more complicated than QS to get up and running with a steeper learning curve in my opinion, but once I worked it through, I'm quite pleased with the set up.

SRC54

Thanks for the interesting conversation. I too check back on past spending plans. Since we are retired and do pretty much the same routine all year around, I have very few spending buckets as you say and so use mostly recurring transactions either monthly, quarterly or annually. My spending limits are for Personal Spending, Gasoline, Hobbies and ancillary spending like fees, sales taxes, etc.

I have a checking account that pays bonus interest on a balance up to a certain level so instead of Savings Goals, I have a monthly transfer from this checking account to the associated savings account. So say the bonus interest is applied to balances up to $30K and at the end of the month it's at $35K, I move $5k to Savings. This transfer is recurring as well, so I don't have to use SGs.

I have just about evened out my monthly expenses by changing insurance to monthly billing and I finally decided to use budget billing for electricity and gas, so I did away with seasonal highs and lows.

So I guess you can say I have simplified. My wife's annual trips with her group of educators is about the only thing I don't spread out. I just have a recurring amount set for that. The same for my April tennis trip although because of the way the condo bills me, it gets spread out over March and April.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/61504#Comment_61504

I have a spread sheet that I use at year end to do my calculations for the coming year. All my routine cost of living expenses are included one way or another. I used this spreadsheet for my initial QS set up. For the first couple of years I had a worksheet that was a summary of my monthly Spending Plan outcomes. Included on this page was a simple accumulative chart that gave me ytd data.

This worksheet kind of served the same purpose as reviewing past Spending Plans but in summary form in a "single glance."

DryHeat

@DannyB

This worksheet kind of served the same purpose as reviewing past Spending Plans but in summary form in a "single glance."

I would like to be able to do that too, but without having to set up a spreadsheet. That's why I made the suggestion linked below. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a lot of admirers.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/14621/add-a-historical-month-by-month-spending-plan-report-edited