Ability to create Planned Spending Expenses for Credit Card Payments and other Transfers (edited)

turb0
turb0 Member
edited January 2023 in Feature Requests
Hello,

Each month I plan how much I am paying on my credit cards and how much I am transferring into various investment accounts. I see no way of including this in the Spending Plan without making a one-time Planned Spending Expense and using a custom category, or going through the tedious process of creating a future-dated transaction in Other spending.

The way I understand the Spending Plan is that it is accounting for cash in and cash out. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but the way Planned Spending is currently implemented, I cannot plan my spending.

Ideally Planned Spending should allow me to input transfers like credit card payments and investments. I know the accounts where the money is coming from and I know the accounts where the money is going to. I'd like to be able to create the following:
  • Planned Spending for transfers
  • Ability to designate a funding account and a recipient account
This is an easier alternative than http://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/5142302-how-are-credit-card-payments-handled-in-the-spending-plan for planning month-to-month credit card payments as the suggested method of tracking credit card transfers either requires you to have already made a payment (negating the idea of a plan), or using a projected amount.

I recognize that this probably has some complications... it would change the way the Other spending category is calculated. Instead of summing up the transactions on credit cards, Other spending would have to take into account the Planned credit card transfer.

I also recognize there are workarounds like https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3011/credit-cards-the-spending-plan#latest and https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/11190/#Comment_11190. I think this should be a first-class feature instead of a workaround.

P.S. I think this is very useful for folks who do not pay off their CCs in full each month, and folks that treat their CCs like an extension of their checking account. Ultimately I want the Spending Plan to tell me how much cash I'm going to have at the end of the month.
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Comments

  • turb0
    turb0 Member
    edited January 2023
    Another way of potentially satisfying this use-case is by adding Investment Goals and Debt Goals. This would enable the Spending Plan to account for transfers in a structured way (but should still allow for monthly-overrides).
  • A DEBT GOAL would be amazing!

    I second this.

  • EL1234
    EL1234 Member ✭✭✭✭

    Spending plan can't really tell you how much cash you'll have at the end of the month, because it doesn't know how much cash (or deficit) you started the month with. It just starts off with your income for this month. I use the Cash Flow projection to review how much cash I have and will have in my checking account, to make sure I stay in the green and see how much I can transfer to savings. You could probably do the same with using extra cash to pay off credit cards or to transfer to investment accounts.

    Credit Card payments don't show up in the Spending Plan because they aren't an expense, they are a transfer from one place (checking account) to another (credit card account). Spending Plan is to track your actual expenses (spending) for the month. When I pay a credit card bill, all the expenses I'm paying for have already been accounted for in the spending plan (either this month's or last) when I made those purchases.

  • bling
    bling Member

    +1. one area that's super lacking in simplifi is anything related with debt. the debt payoff feature request was started back in feb 2020, and still hasn't been picked up.

    the spending plan in its current form only makes sense for people who pay off their credit cards in full. while that's good personal finance in general, it doesn't capture everything. i'm purposesly not paying one of my credit cards in full. why? because it has a 18 month 0% APR rate on it. i've set this up as a recurring transfer but what i really want is it to be a debt payoff with how much i have to pay monthly before the expiry date.

    car loans is another example. it has a known monthly payment and it'd be easy to project the pay off date.

    with mortgage, i have this set up as a manual liability account. i set up a recurring transfer every month. i don't think of this as a transfer, but there's no other way for the spending plan to pick it up.