Handling bills that are less than monthly in the spending plan

cfields

Take homeowners insurance, for example.  I pay it once a year.  Whether I create a reoccurring bill for it or not, it will look like a HUGE spike in my overall monthly spend in the spending plan in the month it is due.  In reality, I save money for it out of each paycheck.  When the month comes to pay it then it costs me no more than the other 11 months of the year.  I'd like to be able to see that in the spending plan instead of an apparent spike. 

There are reoccurring bills, savings goals and 'planned' spending available in the spending plan.  I'm not sure if any combination of those gets me what I want?  Thanks for any suggestions!

Coach Natalie

Hello @cfields,

Thanks for posting your inquiry to the Community!

If you're looking to break down larger, less frequent bills into a monthly amount in the Spending Plan, we suggest using a Savings Goal and electing to have your contributions deducted from the Spending Plan. When it comes time to pay the bill, you'd then want to ignore the transaction from the Spending Plan since you've already saved up the money to cover it by using a Savings Goal. We have a #TipTueday available here that goes over this in more detail. 

We also have an Idea post available here requesting the ability to break down annual/bi-annual expenses, etc., into a monthly amount in the Spending Plan that you may be interested in adding your vote and feedback to. 

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

Hi @cfields, yes, this is one of the first things that came up for me when I started using Simplifi a year ago.  I have used the Savings Goal hack that @Coach Natalie refers you to above to handle my non-monthly recurring expenses with fairly good success.  I do have to say it is a bit of an awkward work around but it does allow you to account for those expenses monthly and to make sure you have what you need when those expenses come due (Provided you keep your mitts off the money you are setting aside ).  The key to keep from throwing your monthly spending off is to make sure you ignore those expenses when paid (and that is a strange feeling when you first do it, but remember, you ARE NOT ignoring the actual expenses since you have been setting aside money each month in your SG toward that expense... you have ALREADY accounted for the expense and in essence paid it monthly installments.)

I have made an adjustment to how I will apply the SG hack for 2023 and describe this adjustment here.

cfields

Thank you @Coach Natalie and @DannyB!  That gives me a workaround.  And now with your help I see that there are a lot of posts on this kind of topic.  I tried to further the discussion in https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1199/less-frequent-recurring-bills-as-bills-not-as-savings-goals with the idea of "spending goals" (which I'm sure has already been thought of )