February '23 Wrap-up, Fantastic!

DannyB

Greeetings Fellow Simplifiers. It's that time again. Thinking I will do one or two more of these wrap-ups as we settle into this new chapter in our lives - Retirement.

OK, here we go… Spending Plan review #10

Income after bills & saving:

• Income - No surprises. No surprises but - and I did prepare myself for this, still - it was a bit jarring not to see those earned income entries in Feburary! I have received some kind of earned inocome since I was 12 years old when I had my first paper route (I started with 30 +/- customers and when I gave up the route 4 years latter I had 75+/- customers.) I had jobs that paid weekly, 2x/month, bi-weekly, monthly along with irregular but steady contracting income. So, yeah, even though I have been preparing for this transition into retiremnt for awhile, it is still a bit unnerving not having earned income. We didn't actually take any withdrawals from our retirement accounts in February as we have residual income from previous months that we are using to balance our inflow/outflow.
• Bills: A green board all the way down. The one bill that is out of alignment with expectations is our natural gas bill. Lot's of brouhaha over natural gas prices in my neck of the woods like other energy products over the past year. I don't get that excited or involved in the brouhahaing or with the broughahaers since they don't want or intend to do anything about the actual systemic issues. I've lived through a number of hyper-inflationary cycles now along with several recessions - each one of which has been “the worst ever!"
• Subscriptions: No surprises here - all paid. I believe there is some work going on to get rid of “Subscriptions” and add transfers to the Spending plan. No problem with that if/when it happens.
• Savings Goals: Full contributions to all SGs. After a conversation with my financial advisor, I will be funding a savings goal that will cover our annual/semi-annual fixed expenses monthly. That will maintain our “emergency” fund in addition to having money for those non-monthly recurring expenses. Here is a great post on Savings Goal usage by Chris ( @Flopbot )

Planned Spending:

• I only had to adjust one planned spending category in February (which means I had to adjust at least one other category (in this case I took money from two categories and added it to the one I went over in.) I have overspent this category a couple of times now so for March I went ahead and adjusted it up while adjusting down two other categories I consistantly underspend. The net result of these adjustments based on our past 12 mnths, is a net decrease in our monthly Planned Spending.
• This recently came up in the forum here, but there was a blip in Planned Spending when some previously deleted categories reappeared. The blip didn't last long and since I redeleted them they haven't come back.

Other Spending:

• I did have some Other Spending in February but nothing surprising. I review any expenses that show up in Other spending and most of these expenses end up being categorized into my planned spending categories. Some of these expenses stay in Other Spending no matter how I categorize them.

Left at end of month:

As predicted and expected my left at end of month dropped substantially in February - we ended the month with a .2% surplus. This is closer to what I would like to see at the end of each month. One of the features I would like to see addressed is a better way to handle left at end of month funds - a way to move them into savings, investments, or to move that money forward into spending accounts. Not sure how this would be done, but it would be a nice way to wrap up each month.

The only thing I'm a bit sad about is that, once again, I didn't receive the Prompt Payer badge for some reason. It appears that all my bills and subscriptions are paid for the month, but no joy as far as the badge is concerned.

SRC54

A nice rundown. I am having similar experience since I "budgeted" my planned expenses. At first, I just let everything go to Other spending. I have been on a strict Keto Diet / Fasting until 3pm and eating between 3-6 pm, so it is amazing how much I am saving on food and drink. My wine consumption has been cut in half! So I have cut down my Extras Expenses. I will have a tennis tournament this month at the Beach, and that will put a dent in my spending, mostly for lodging.

I still cannot find a way to make the Savings Goals work for me, which is fine, if they work for others. No doubt, they are designed for younger folks. I moved my Rewards checking account to Savings so what I have left over each month shows in Savings. I consider the Left-over to be Savings. I've always been a good saver.

DannyB

Thanks @SRC54

Yeah, the Savings Goals hack to cover those non-monthly but necessary expenses is not elegant. I truly do hope the development team has someone or a sub team that is digging into how to integrate non-monthly expenses into the Spending Plan or perhaps as a seperate module that functions like the current month focused Spending Plan but on an annual basis for non-monthly expenses.

The trick would be how to fund this seperate modual, but some kind of modification of saving goal contribution might be a solution. Otherwise it would have to be some kind of roll over ability for a specific kind of recurring bill or a specialized Planned Spending category.

I know some users want the ability to have designated Planned Spending funds rolled from month to month to allow for monthly variations in a given planned spending category, but this would be different then what I'm thinking of.

Anyway, appriciate your participation in the forum, I learn a lot from this community.