Setting a budget category for Annual Items Only

Question

I would like to establish a Budget for Annual Items such as Auto Insurance, Annual Subscriptions, Taxes, Birthdays, Christmas, Etc. I will use Annual for the category for each item.

I would like to set my Target Amount for the entire year, example $3000, and show the remaining balance as the Annual Items hit.

I am having issues doing this in the Planned Spending whether I select roll-over balance or not.

I'm looking for suggestions of a way to achieve this.

I have set up a Watchlist which works somewhat but does not show the remaining balance.

Thank You for any help,

Phillip W.

DryHeat · Answer

Because the monthly Spending Plan is the basic budgeting tool in Simplifi, I've been unable to find a true "annual" budgeting method.

That said, Planned Spend with Rollover has worked well for me but required a bit of set up to make it work. It gives me a good idea of how much money each month I should consider to be "set aside" for these less frequent expenses.

I've had to use a separate Planned Spend expense for each annual, semi-annual, or whatever expense, with a monthly contribution that brings it up to the needed amount in the month that it is paid. In the beginning, I have to calculate how much I should have put away so far for that expense at the time I set up the series and use that as the opening rollover, and then set the monthly amount to allocate the rest of the needed funds over time.

Once each one was set up it has been pretty automatic. I pay the bill when due and the rollover starts the next month at zero. If the bill has changed from what was expected I just adjust the last month's target amount to cover it.

Coach Natalie · Answer

@pwhitt, thanks for posting your inquiry to the community!

Right now, the Spending Plan is designed to review income and expenses for a given month, so you can't break down annual expenses into a monthly amount or anything similar. Instead, it looks at the single expense in the month it occurs.

With that, we do have a workaround involving Savings Goals that may help in this case!

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3446/tiptuesday-using-savings-goals-to-break-down-annual-bi-annual-expenses-in-the-spending-plan

We also have a couple of Idea posts you may want to vote on and add feedback to. You can also follow them for updates!

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1199/break-down-annual-bi-annual-expenses-to-a-monthly-amount-in-spending-plan-edited-6-merged-votes

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1067/annual-planned-spending-or-other-options-besides-monthly-edited-2-merged-votes

Our FAQ here goes over Idea posts in more detail:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/998/creating-and-voting-for-ideas-in-the-community

Other users may come along with advice and suggestions on how they accomplish this in Quicken Simplifi, but in the meantime, I hope the information I provided is helpful.