Reflections on using Savings Goals to handle non-monthly/annual/semiannual expenses

DannyB

It has been pointed out that using Savings Goals as a work around to handle non-monthly recurring expenses is at best awkward. My wife and I are doing a bit of traveling (aka vacationing) this year using funds we saved over the past couple of years for these travels. I accounted for these funds in Simplifi as a Savings Goal.

Now that we have been actively traveling using these funds I come to the "awkward" part of keeping track of this spending, trying to make sure each travel related expense is marked "Ignore from Spending Plan" and keeping up with withdrawals from the Savings Goal.

This is also true for our Xmas & Bday SG where if is a bit tricky… OK, it's a real hassle… keeping up to date on moving funds out of the SG when the money is spent.

Right now it's no longer clear how much I should have in these SGs compared to what Simplifi reports I have.

I really do hope that our development team is working hard to incorporate a way to handle routine, recurring, non-monthly bills, subscriptions and planned spending.

Flopbot

@DannyB , you probably won't remember this, but a long time back in some random post, I asked you how to handle all the random Savings Goal transactions "at production scale". Your experience is basically what I was talking about; how do you mark all the various transaction as needing refunded and then actually get the money transferred. While I don't think my process is perfect yet, it does seem to be working for me right now (been using it for about 1.5 months).

1. Spend Money (the fun part)
2. Edit the transaction once it clears, mark Ignore from Spending Plan - if I remember, which I never do - and add this tag.
   
   
3. Close the transaction and ignore it until the CC statement arrives.
4. When I "reconcile" the paper CC statement (i.e. check off all the Reviewed checkboxes in the transaction register), then I do this filter for my original tag. Note that I also use this same process for my Cash Envelope system.
   
   
5. If I did everything properly, Simplifi will show me how much I need to transfer between my Savings Account (Savings Goals) and my Checking Account before the CC payment clears in order to have covered any SG-covered spending. Sometimes, you have to do a bit of sleuthing to figure out what SG the money is coming from and which transactions are within the timeframe of the current CC statement This tediousness could possibly be reduced with unique Tags and better filtering, although I haven't played around with that yet.
   
   
6. The final step is to go back to each of the transactions with a “SG Covered (Clear On Refund)" Tag and do the "Clear On Refund" bit (i.e. remove the tag from the individual transactions) so that it doesn't show up in the future when I do the process again.

I do really hope that Simplifi builds out the Savings Goals a lot more, but in the meantime, this process isn't awful. Granted, I'm also not doing it while also on vacation so that makes it less annoying right there!

Just some random thoughts. Now, go enjoy something scenic and share a picture!

RobWilk

You don't need to ignore from spending plan —- include them in the spending plan, but in the spending plan ignore one side of the savings transfer (to checking, presumably) so the money from the savings goal counts as transferred in income that month. Let's say you transfer $5000 from savings to checking, if you unhide one side of the transaction in the transfers bucket, now your spending plan has an additional $5000 to spend that month.

DannyB

Hi @RobWilk

I appreciate your input… it's not the transfers I'm concerned about, that is all covered, it's keeping tabs on the actual expenses and then making a "withdrawal" from the SG to keep the SG in alignment with SG spending that gets a bit tedious… I'm a lousy detail person 😏

What I do is to assign the expense to an appropriate category, i.e. Vacation > Vacation2023 in the instance of a travel-for-fun expense, then use Tags to refine further which travel-for-fun experience the expense belongs to, i.e. "June Road Trip" or "Mexico Cruise," etc. This allows me to run a report on total travel expenses, travel expenses in a given year and a specific travel experience.

But then, if I want to keep my Savings Goals reconciled to my actual spending I have to make sure I make appropriate withdrawals from the SG once the funds are spent on a travel-for-fun experience.

DannyB

Hey Chris ( @Flopbot )

Thanks! I do remember your previous post… vaguely 🙄,

I shared with Rob ( @RobWilk ) how I'm currently tracking my SG expenditures so I have some chance of keeping things balanced out

A "couple" more things I'm doing to try and make this work for me:

• I have SG funds in 4 different accounts (I think you use 1 account)
  • Regular savings account at primary bank
  • Regular checking account at primary bank
  • 2 High yield savings accounts at secondary banks
• I currently have 7 SGs
  • I move funds that go to one time annual expenses in the regular savings and pay directly from that account and all this is tracked in one of my SGs (Non-Monthly Fixed Expenses)
  • All Vacation SG funds go to the high yield account. I have a cc with that secondary bank and all vacation spending goes on that card and is paid from that savings account. (Vacation 2023 - I also have an SG that was "completed" in 2022 that holds last years contributions for this years travels)
  • Funds for SGs that get used semi-regularly but not month-to-month, i.e. b-days and Xmas SG, Medical expenses SG, home and auto maintenance/repairs SG all stay in my primary checking account and thus no need to move funds in and out for these more regular and irregular expenses.
  • Long-term savings - Emergency fund SG (our financial advisor insists we keep this going) and Auto replacement SG - go into a different HYS account from vacation funds as these are long term savings.

As far as the actual real world handling of funds, this isn't much different than how I've shuffled money around before I started using Simplifi. Savings Goals do help with making sure these funds are accumulating appropriately - it's just the bookkeeping as you well know.

P.S. IMHO you deserve the top spot in this forum!

Flopbot

@DannyB

As I read over your post again, I really can't think of a way to make the tedious portion of the bookkeeping any less tedious - taking into account the current design of Simplifi. I too hope Quicken keeps improving on Savings Goals; they are my absolute favorite feature of Simplifi and I soooo want them to work flawlessly!

Short of the tag system in my first reply, here are two other possibilities you might consider. I haven't tried either of these.

1. If ALL the things that get the 'Travel' Category are reimbursable expenses, then you could just run a report on some regular schedule (ex. when making the CC payment monthly - or multiple times a month in your case?). The report would show you how much had been spent during that time frame for that category and the total would be the amount needing transferred to cover spending. I do something similar with my HSA expenses. I have two level 1 categories for health ('Health' & 'Health ~ HSA Eligible'). I just categorize stuff as needed and then, when necessary, can run a report showing how much money to transfer out of the HSA; if there was enough in the HSA to cover it. Summery: Slightly less tedious than using tags.
   
   
2. What if you just figured out the average spend per trip and then automated a bank transfer for that same amount (lets say $100) every month or two weeks. It wouldn't be as accurate, but it would be a lot less tedious and would give your more time to play shuffleboard, eat tacos, or whatever they do on cruises. You would have to remember to do the regular Withdraw from the Savings Goal, but you'd be dealing with a known amount every single time so it might be easier. Summery: Least tedious of all.

I don't expect you Danny to read this while working on your tan, but I'm including a link to the way I treat Savings Goals (click here) for anyone else that's following along. So far, I haven't changed my approach to Savings Goals or any of my Unofficial/Unwritten Rules for Savings Goals. In total, I have 6 Savings Accounts of which only 2 make use of Simplifi's Savings Goals. The other 4 are named/designated for Emergency Fund, B-Days, Christmas, & Auto Replacement so any money that gets transferred into those Savings Accounts is automatically earmarked for that specific use and I don't have to worry about keeping up with Savings Goal Deposits/Withdrawals. The other 2 are a mix of Savings Goals, but one of my rules is that every SG is only tied to one (1) real-world account.

There, my rambling is done.