Releasing money every month is silly. Give option for categories to ACCRUE.

Chrobrego

Having to release money for 20 different accounts is tedious and pointless. WHY????   What I really want to do is to have a category and be able to have the option to simply accrue money in it each month.

For example, I have an annual bill for term life insurance. In my old financial app, I could simply set a spending target for the annual amount and the app would tell me how much I needed to save each month.  I would then designate this amount to the category and it would accrue over time.  Simple and effective.  

In Simplifi, to do something similar, I have to setup a 'Savings Goal' and then add money to it. What do I do with the empty category then until I need to use it.  Then when I get the money, I have to 'release it' then book the charge on the category on the day it's due.  Too tedious.  Too non-intuitive.  Too many steps. [removed - disruptive]

Coach Natalie

Hello @Chrobrego,

Thanks for sharing your feedback with the Community!

It sounds like what you're looking for is the ability to roll over unused Spending Plan funds to the next month. We do have an existing Idea post requesting this ability, so I'd definitely suggest adding your vote, as well as your feedback regarding each Category accruing from month-to-month. 

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/114/add-budget-spending-plan-start-each-new-month-with-the-previous-months-leftover-amount-option

We also have an Idea post requesting the ability to break down larger, less frequent expenses into a monthly amount in the Spending Plan that you may be interested in checking out. 

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1199/less-frequent-recurring-bills-as-bills-not-as-savings-goals

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie

Flopbot

@Chrobrego, now that @Coach Natalie has explained how Simplifi does (or more accurately doesn’t yet) do accrual / roll over, I want to challenge you to think if you really - truly - need all 20 ‘Planned Spending’ cards.

For example, in your post, you mentioned that one of them wouldn’t be used every month and Coach confirmed that it should be a Savings Goal instead.  If you’re just going to be releasing the full 100% back into your Spending Plan 11 months out of the year, then maybe you don’t really need that one as a Planned Spending card.

Just for consideration, I only have nine cards myself and the step of releasing funds takes just seconds; and I get a feeling of completion/satisfaction when doing it.  I’d be curious how many cards @DannyB has since he’s become a big fan of the Spending Plan concept as a whole.  All my cards represent the most important/frequently bought/most likely to go over Categories in our budget.  I add non-critical Categories that I’m more curious about than anything as a Watchlist Card.

Best wishes!

DannyB

@Chrobrego , Here is my thinking on how I have adapted to Simplifi (and that is a pretty good way to think about it, adapting) and how I have adapted Simplifi to be my personal financial management app.

The first big step for me was switching from having categories w/ subcategories w/ sub-subcategories, ad infitium… to thinking of my budget in terms of fixed expenses and flexible expenses.  This goes for both monthly recurring expenses and non-monthly (annual, semi-annual, etc) expenses.  The Spending Plan is great at handling the monthly fixed (Income after Bills & Savings section) and flexible (Planned Spending section) expenses.  Simplifi is not so great (YET) with handling the non-monthly fixed and flexible expenses - Savings goals is sort of a start, well no, not really since SGs weren't designed with non-monthly recurring expenses in mind... at least they don't appear to be. OK, enough of that, SGs at least provide a workaround.

Anyway, back to the theme of this discussion.  I have whittled my planned spending categories down to 6 (I recently subsumed one more planned spending category into one of my other Planned Spending categories). These six categories are as narrow as "Gasoline" and as broad as "Other Fun Stuff."  The narrow categories typically stand alone in my overall budget (i.e. "Gasoline") with no subcategories.  Others will have a number of subcategories to track various expenses I want to keep tabs on.

To @Chrobrego 's issue, I don't list any of my non-monthly expenses in my Spending Plan, either in the Bills or Subscriptions sections (fixed non-monthly) or in the Planned Spending section (non-monthly flexible).

Right now, Simplifi's configuration doesn't allow for this kind of accounting in the Spending Plan except through the SG modal workaround.  By using SGs to save for non-monthly expenses you can at least account for the funds you are setting aside to meet these expenses in your monthly spending.  But as far as the actual expense when it comes due you can pay it with the SG money you set aside but you can't really include the expense in that months Spending Plan since you can't move that money back into that month's Spending Plan as income for that month.  You will have to move the money out of the savings goal (not that it has gone anywhere in the real world) but as far as Simplifi is concerned you can withdrawal that money from the SG to spend on the expense it was saved for and since you have been making monthly "payments" for a given non-monthly expense, you can ignore the expense in your spending plan.  But, yeah, you will be moving money into and out of SGs, just not back into your monthly spending plan.

Sorry if that's more than needed for this discussion, but, well, any who pay attention know already that's what I typically do!