Tell us how you plan to track your vacation in Simplifi!

Coach Natalie

With summer right around the corner and restrictions from the pandemic starting to lift, we know that a lot of you are planning a vacation over the next few months. We'd love to hear how you plan to track your various vacation expenses in Simplifi! Or, if you have any suggestions on how to do so, please feel free to share your knowledge!

Coach Nicole

While I don't have any vacations planned currently, I'd love to share how I tracked my previous vacation expenses. I used a combination of Tags and Watchlists. Here's how:

First, I created a Tag named San Diego to represent my trip. Then, I created a Watchlist based on the San Deigo tag. I did set a targeted amount on my Watchlist because I wanted to ensure I didn't overspend. 

Once my vacation started, I categorized my transactions as usual but applied my newly created tag. My Watchlist updated automatically with each transaction I tagged, and I was able to monitor the amount I spent and the type of purchases. It's an eye-opener to see how much a family of four can spend on food when vacationing!

Coach Paco

I have been tracking all of my spending for my hiking/camping trip on a Watchlist to track what I'm spending on all of my hiking and camping gear before I go out to the local mountain range! 

I tag all of my transaction with my less than creative tag, Hiking Vaca Stuff, to know that I'm not going too overboard with my preparations! 

Coach Natalie

I just got back from a wonderful vacation to San Francisco! I was very simple with my tracking, as I had a good chunk of money saved up for accommodations and spending, so I didn't keep track of anything while I was actually on vacation.

Before I left, however, I created a new category called "Vacation", and when I got back, I made sure to categorize any of the transactions using the 'Vacation' category. I then excluded the transactions from my Spending Plan, and, instead, ran a Spending Report on the category to determine how much I needed to take out of savings to cover what I spent. 

This method allowed me to enjoy my vacation without having to keep track of finances, as well as allowed me to easily allot the expenses as I saw fit, as soon as I got back.  

Flopbot

This was a really great post.  Thank you @Coach Natalie for asking these sorts of questions in the forum.  The answers really help us users learn new ideas!

Coach Natalie

Hello @Flopbot,

Thanks for commenting!!

We'd also love to hear how you plan to track your vacation expenses in Simplifi! If you don't have a vacation coming up or haven't quite gotten that far in Simplifi yet, tell us how you've tracked past vacation expenses in Quicken.

Any feedback at all very well may help the next User!

-Coach Natalie

Flopbot

Hi @Coach Natalie

In Quicken, I often tracked vacation spending / business trips using Tags which meant I ended up with a list sort of like this.

• Chicago 2015
• Steve's Wedding 2016
  
• Indiana Dunes 2019

Then, if I wanted to see how much I spent, I would simply run a report.

The problem with this method is that the tag list just continued to grow and grow and I was never sure what I should do with them long term.  I was afraid to delete them / hide them and it always seemed that there had to be some better way.

As far as I can tell, with the sole exception of not allowing recurring transactions, the Savings Goals feature of Simplifi seems to be better than that of Quicken Desktop.  At some point, I'd like to play around with the idea of using Savings Goals for vacation spending instead.

I like your idea of an "excluded category", but I don't think there's a way to - at the category settings level - exclude an entire category from the Spending Plan; each and every time it gets used in a transaction.  I would not want to have to take the time to exclude by hand each and every transaction; that would just be annoying.

Coach Natalie

Hello @Flopbot,

Yay, thanks so much for your input!!

We do have an existing Idea post requesting the ability to hide Categories and Tags from Reports and the Spending Plan that would be great to have your vote on!

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/133/excluding-categories-and-tags-from-trends-edited/p1?new=1

-Coach Natalie