March Musings

ajbopp

Ever since I started using Simplifi I've been vaguely uncomfortable with what the Spending Plan is telling me I have "available." I've never been able to put my finger on exactly why, except that it is almost constantly telling me that I am spending far more than my income every month, yet my monthly summary ends up telling me everything was rosy.

With the rollover of March to April, I finally uncovered the cause of my uneasiness and posted a bug report here.

All that being said, this particular month looks a little wonky because I received a couple of unexpected - and unusually large - refunds, which get recorded as a positive change to my expenses for the month, making it appear that I actually spent about half what I really did. It also appears that the monthly summary does not count contributions to savings goals as expenses, but the Spending Plan does, which (along with the bug posted above) makes the summary look very different than the Spending Plan would suggest I should expect.

Having gained some insight into the quirks and bugs that I'm dealing with, I get a clearer overall picture of my finances than I had on March 31 and I can do some quick mental arithmatic to make more sense of what Simplifi is trying to tell me. It also helps explain why I earned the Savvy Spender badge on March 7 even though the February Spending Plan said over spent by upwards of $1400. I expect to get the two-month streak SS badge on April 7 even though, again, the Spending Plan tells me I over spent.