Best way to deal with one time expenses larger than budget that come from Savings (?)

RobWilk

I set money aside in Savings for certain purchases that are larger than my monthly budget allows.   Even if I fit them into my monthly budget, it would leave little room for spending on anything else.

One is coming up in one month, it's about a $1000 expense, and my regular monthly budget (after savings and bills) is around $600.

What's the best way to deal with this for the spending plan?

At this point, I'm thinking I mark the expense as "Ignore from Spending Plan" since it was paid for "over the prior 12 months of contributions to savings" and not really a this month expenditure other than it happened to be spent this month.

An alternative idea would be to reduce my savings amount on the spending plan by $1000, but i normally leave some of that amount for wiggle room on monthly spending.

DannyB

Hi @RobWilk

Happy New Year.

This topic is throughly discussed in this forum. At this time your first thought is the best way to go about handling this expense.  As you said, you have been paying this expense over the past year with your monthly contributions to your savings for this expense.  When the expense is paid you can withdrawal from your savings to make the payment but mark it as ignore in spending plan.  

DannyB

Here is a post on using SGs for annual/semi-annual expenses:

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

Using SGs in this way is a bit awkward and works best for a one-time-expense though I also use SGs to set aside money for irregular spending like birthdays and Christmas, auto maintenance/repairs, house maintenance/repairs, etc.  This usage is a bit more awkward but doable.

RobWilk

@DannyB I do remember similar topics being discussed, but could not locate them by browsing and I wasn't sure which terms to search for.  Thanks for answering, I think I agree with you.

And, of course Happy New Year to You and all here