Spending Plan - Income Way Off Due to Retirement Distributions Being Moved to 'Transfers' (edited)

DannyB

Don't know what to think about the new Transfers & Credit Card Payments bucket in the Spending Plan but I have two problems in my Spending Plan that didn't exist prior to this new addition.

First, the new bucket has messed with my income. I'm short in income because my monthly distribution from retirement accounts has been moved from recurring income to the new bucket creating these issues:

1. The transfer between my retirement account and my checking account was reversed - Simplifi showed a debit from my checking and a deposit to my retirement account. I think I corrected this by editing the investment transaction.
2. Now the transfer appears to be correct in Simplifi but I'm not sure how to make the transfer show up a income. Without this income my Spending Plan will "fail."

The second issue is strange and not sure if it is connected with the new bucket. Notice my "Subscriptions." My spending plan is showing that I will pay $6,856.09 in "subscriptions." When I click on "Subscriptions" and add up those actually listed, including one annual subscription I will pay in June, the total is $646,10, less than a 10th of what is reported by Simplifi. This is a huge discrepancy and I have no clue what's causing it.

The combination of these two problems leaves me with a distressing $8,292 deficit for June!

Hopefully a little education on the new Transfer & Credit Card Payments bucket will resolve some of this but any insights about the Subscriptions bucket issue will be appreciated.

Coach Natalie

Hello @DannyB,

Thanks for reporting this issue to the Community, although I'm sorry to hear of the confusion and that you're experiencing this behavior in Simplifi.

To clarify, the only major change that was made with the addition of the 'Transfers' bucket is that all Recurring "Transfers" would be moved to this section, and then each individual Reminder of a Recurring Linked Transfer can be managed (i.e. one side ignored with the other side included). With that said, I'm not sure how you had your Recurring Series for the retirement transfer set up prior, but I was able to show a Recurring Transfer from my Retirement account (which was set up as an IRA for testing purposes) to my Checking account by making the Recurring Series like this:

This setup is for $5000 to be moved from my Retirement account to my Checking account as income each month, and I'm just including the "money out" side in the Spending Plan:

With this setup, the Spending Plan is adding $5000 to the 'Transfers and Credit Card Payment' bucket and shows that the money is going into my ICCU Checking account. Although the Linked Transfer isn't shown under Income as I suspect it used to be, you'll still end up with the same totals for the Bills & Income section.

The reason it's the "money out" side you'd want to include in the Spending Plan, even though it's an income amount, is due to how the Linked Transfers are set up where they're usually for an expense coming out of the 'Account' (payment account) and the income side is going into the 'Category' (receiving account). However, you can just plug a plus sign in front of the 'Amount' to reverse the flow of money!

For the other issue with your Subscriptions total being off, that's very strange. Since it is an entirely different issue and will most likely require an escalation, please go ahead and create a new post to report the issue. I edited this post accordingly to just cover the first topic.

Please let us know how it goes with the Recurring Transfer!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

@Coach Natalie

Thanks for taking a look at this and thanks for the education and I'll try to figure out exactly what you are saying and see how it all works.

For now let me throw a few things at you regarding my current experience of the Spending Plan.

Here is today's snapshot of my Spending Plan:

It appears whatever was going on with Subscriptions is no longer going on so no reason to escalate that issue whatever it was.

I fiddled around with the transfer but based on what you said not sure I should have. Here is my next question. As you can see my income is being reported in Simplifi as $4260.10 and my bottom line is $1.37 which makes since after subtracting bills, subscriptions and savings ($4260.10 - $4258.73). But when I look at the summary on the left I see I have $1289.35 available as of today (6/5) which shouldn't be.

The summary column is a bit confusing to look at. 1.37 - 2495 + 3782.98 does indeed = $1289.98. the question is, where did the $3782.98 in other spending come from and how did other spending become a positive number in the first place?

That number, of course, comes from the inclusion of investment account transactions that are being included in Other spending as of Simplifi Version: 3.75.3. I'm still working on updating all my investment account transactions so all investment account transactions included in Other spending are currently "Uncategorized." Not sure what will happen to that number once these transactions are categorized, but for now this is the source of the positive number for Other spending.

At any rate, these "uncategorized" investment transactions include the $3100.00 that is listed in the new Transfers & Credit Card Payments bucket and used to be listed as a recurring income transaction. The "$3100.00" shows up in my investment account as $3435.25 because the actual withdraw includes income taxes that are then deducted from our distribution and forwarded to the US Treasury leaving us with the $3100 we need to make our Spending Plan work.

Nevertheless, I'm still wondering how, where and when the $3100 transfer from our retirement accounts will actually show up in my Spending Plan? My June Spending Plan "works" because of the odd behavior of Other spending, but not sure it would work if that wasn't happening based on what I see excluding "Other spending."

I'm not sure I'll be able to really dig into to this before the issue with Other spending is fixed since that bug really skews the whole Spending plan for me at this time… and I am on a road trip for most of June with limited access and time to fiddle with money stuff… other then spending a bundle of it - all covered by our Vacation 2023 Savings Goal 😁 of course.

Coach Natalie

Hello @DannyB,

With Investment Transactions showing in Other Spending, the Alert has now been resolved, however, our Product Team has added the ability to include "cash flow" types in the Spending Plan and Watchlists, just as you can with Reports. So, if the Investment Transactions you're seeing are a "cash flow" type, such as 'Payment/Deposit', you'll most likely still need to do something about it.

Unless you specifically want to see your Investment Transactions in the Spending Plan, the easiest way to resolve this matter would be to simply ignore the entire investment account from Reports under Accounts > Settings, which will also ignore the account from the Spending Plan and Watchlists.

http://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/5160316-how-to-ignore-accounts-from-reports-and-the-spending-plan

As for your Retirement Transfer, if you specifically want to see this in 'Income', you will most likely need to use an Income Category for the Series instead of using a Transfer Category. I'm not sure how you had it set up prior, but it sounds like it was a Recurring Transfer if you're now seeing it in the 'Transfers & Credit Card Payments' section.

Let us know what works for you!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

[My actual question is in Bold below]

My Spending plan's success depends on a monthly distribution from retirement accounts. Before the implementation of the new Transfers & Credit Card Payments section in Income after bills and savings this was no problem since I had this transaction set up as a recurring income transaction.

When the new Transfers,,, section was implemented this month that transaction was automatically moved to the new Transfers… section but the end result of the transaction is $0.00. How do I get this transaction to show up as income or a positive addition to my spending plan?

Here are some screen shots the summary page showing the transaction/transfer and of the transaction details. I'm missing something but not sure what it is.

Coach Natalie

@DannyB, try clicking the three dots at the end of the expense side of the Transfer directly from the Transfers and Credit Card Payments section of the Spending Plan, and then click "Exclude from Spending Plan". Since both sides are currently being included, the amounts are offsetting each other, leaving you with a net of $0. Ignoring the expense side only (the negative amount) should leave the remaining income side counting toward the Transfers and Credit Card Payments section of the Spending Plan and your overall Spending Plan total.

If that works, you'll next want to edit the Recurring Series itself, and you'll want to include just the 'Money Out' side by unchecking the box next to "Exclude from Spending Plan" under 'Money Out'. This will leave the income side included in the Spending Plan, while ignoring the expense side (more details on this in my comment above). The income will be counted toward the Transfers and Credit Card Payments bucket. Please take a look at future months and see if this also works for you for the upcoming Reminders.

This Support Article has also been completely updated with the new Transfers bucket in the Spending Plan: https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/5142302-how-credit-card-payments-and-transfers-are-handled-in-the-spending-plan

Please let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

Thanks again, @Coach Natalie, for your patient rehash. Sorry I’m so thick headed about this. I’ll carefully read through and apply your instructions latter this evening. I’ll also read through the updated help article to try and educate myself on this new feature.