How do I set up a recurring transaction to 'move money' into my virtual savings account? And how can I make that part of my monthly spending plan?
@simplij You wouldn't be able to create a recurring transaction to contribute to your savings goal. There isn't a way to make it part of your Spending Plan but I think that would be an excellent addition to the Spending Plan!
Oh funny. I figured that was a big part of how this works. If I can’t track that ‘spend’ in my spending plan, not set up a recurring transaction’, savings goals have little to no visibility and much reduce value. IMHO.
Just to add, I feel like this is a real 'miss'. There are so many great uses of savings goals, IF we can set up recurring transactions and make them part of the spending plan. If it can't be made automatic, and I would have to manually always be moving money into it, I honestly don't see the value of it.
Simplfi peeps, since I can't use savings goals with the spending plan, what is the suggested method for 'saving up' for annual bills, like property taxes? I need to make sure I am virtually putting aside a certain amount each month so that I have that money available when the bill is due. I definitely don't want to have to manually do that every single month with the Savings Goals. And I don't want to have to set up an actual transfer between bank accounts just to make it work with Simplifi. Is there another way?
@simplij There isn't another way I can think of for your situation other than a savings goal, to be honest. I see if I can figure something out and IF I do, I will post it on this discussion
Please consider the option to schedule Savings Goal contributions just as Bills and Subscriptions can be scheduled.
I personally know that the day after I get my first paycheck of the month, I'm going to be doing a lot of savings goal activity, and most of it is always going to be the same. Software should excel at automating repetitive tasks. It would be nice to be able to have Simplifi automate this activity by setting up a schedule. This way Savings Goals could also be reflected in the Cash Flow [graph], and more accurately reflected in the Spending Plan.
I support the general idea of what you're suggessting here, and voted on that.
However:
-As of now no scheduled transactions can be auto-entered, they can only be 'matched'. I don't think this is what you want.
-There are no 'upcoming' transactions or cash flow chart for savings goals, so it'lll have to work a little different.
-Also —- in my case it's also only once a month i would make savings goal contributions, but if it was automatic based on something like the individual goals' monthly contribution amount, it shouldn't "make up for the amount that was withdrawn" - i.e. Let's say I have $1000 goal contributing $100 a month the balance was $500 before contribution but withdrew $10 (leaving $490), if i looked at the contribute page it would say I owe $110 this month on that goal, I would need it to stick to the $100 rather than $110. In other words, I would need to occasonally need to dip into some of the goals.
What I'm asking for is to be able to plan Savings Goal contributions the way I can plan my mortgage or grocery bill. In this case, nothing would need to be matched, the scheduled amount would just be added automatically from the specified account (which we all want to see added as well) to the goal.
If this feature is implemented, transfers to Savings Goals could be reflected in the accounts' cash flow [graph] so that the Available Balance for each account is actually closer to something accurate.
I'm not proposing an end to needing to fine tune Savings Goals on occasion, just like I need to fine tune the grocery bill from time to time. But the bul, of the monthly work could be taken care of without my intervention.
Okay, one more clarificaiton/question: Right now existing savings goal contributions do -not- affect the balance of the source account (savings, in my case), so are you suggesting the cash flow chart reflect the balance as if contributing to a goal reduced the balance? If so, I'm not sure whether or not i support that — that's kind of a separate issue from auto-contributions.
Two separate balance lines on a cash flow chart, one the actual balance, one factoring in savings contributions, would be acceptable to me.
Two separate balance lines is currently what is displayed on the dashboard.
I'm suggesting the Cash Flow [graph] should show the same thing - for consistency if nothing else. Plus, I don't think money should be represented as being in two places at once. It's either in the Savings Goal, or it's in the Savings account, not both. Effectively the Cash Flow [graph] says that money is in the savings account, and the Savings Goal says it's in the Savings Goal bucket.
[removed] and Mint have a simple option to allocate the total for a savings account to a goal. That's easy to implement and would solve my problem. The other thing you could do is to make it so that a transfer into the account linked to the goal which matches the amount would automatically go to the goal. That's a little more of a challenge but should not be too hard to implement.
