July Wrap-up - Just For Fun

DannyB

July is well past but thought I'd do my wrap-up anyway! This was our 7th month using Simplifi and I'm pleased to say, once again, all is well.  In my profile I answered the question about my primary money goal with "Feel confident I am on the right track"  I can honestly say that my wife and I are indeed feeling confident we are on the right track and Simplifi has been a great tool to help us stay on track.

When I click on our spending plan for July and go through each section it's good to see once again... it's green all the way!

Income after bills & savings:

• All planned and expected income "Received" July included a 3rd paycheck for my wife that boosted July's income over what we normally plan for... that's always nice   
• All expected bills show a nice, green "Paid" all down the board.  We didn't have any non-standard bills in July (i.e. auto insurance, property tax, etc.)  
• Subscriptions - All PAID!  Seeing all our monthly subscriptions listed in one place has allowed us to whittled down the number of subscriptions over the past few months as we have examined the value received over against the cost. 
• All savings goals contributed to and either on target, ahead of target or completed and waiting for disbursement!

GREEN is GOOD! 

Planned spending:

• We now have 9 Planned spending categories that we plan for.  Only 2 of them had a substantial percentage of the amount we planned to spend left to spend at the end of the month.  Together these 2 categories make up a small amount of our overall spending plan so I will not make any further adjustments to these to categories.
• This is perhaps simply semantics, but I have come to enjoy thinking of our cashflow from month to month in terms of "spending plan" rather than "budget".  It's not a big deal perhaps, but using "spending plan" feels more impowering.  Just a thought.
• As for adjusting amounts in any given category during the month and having the ability to somehow rollover from month-to-month for certain categories... well the conversation continues HERE.

Other Spending:

• I've come to appreciate this final section of the Spending Plan and am much more relaxed with it.  
• In July we ended up with just over $600 in "Other spending".  I do still wonder about some of that spending showing up here since it is categorized into categories we have in our Planned spending section.  Any ideas or insights on this?  
• Over all impact on our finances is pretty close to nil so I will perhaps revisit it at some point to find out what exactly is going on.  Otherwise, it's nice to see when something shows up in other spending so we can keep track of it.

The Bottom Line:  All of our spending was accounted for in our Bills, Subscriptions, Savings goals, Planned spending and Other spending and we ended the month with a 36% surplus (Remember that 3rd paycheck!)

Coach Natalie

Thanks for sharing, @DannyB!

When it comes to seeing items in Other Spending that should be in Planned Spending, since Planned Spending expenses go by Categories, I'd suggest checking the Category of the transactions in question and adjusting accordingly. If you're still seeing an issue, you're more than welcome to create a bug report post to report it.

-Coach Natalie