How do I cancel/end savings goal after the money is already spent without inflating acct balance?

ewalkerc

I'm afraid I botched the savings goal feature.

For six months, I made regular contributions to a savings goal. At the end of each month, I transferred the goal amount to an outside investment account so it was no longer in my primary checking. I decided I no longer want to do this monthly, so not sure what else to do, I just canceled the goal. When I did , Simplifi increased my checking account balance by the total amount I'd already saved (and transferred out) for this goal, so now my checking account balance is way inflated. My questions are:

1. How do I correct the balance on my checking account?
2. How do I use this feature differently so when I want to do something similar in the future, this doesn't happen again?

DannyB

Hi @ewalkerc

First, here as the support article for using Savings Goals. The last two sections of this article are most pertinent to your question.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/3676756-using-simplifi-s-savings-goals

Here's my thoughts on what happened and what to do in the future:

• When you contribute to a Savings Goal (SG) you are given an option to choose which account you are contributing from.
• I suspect you made you SG contribution from your checking account in Simplifi.
• Even though you made a real world transfer from checking to you investment account, in Simplifi that money still resided in your checking account since that is where you contributed from.
• You can tell where Simplifi thinks an SG's money is by navigating to your Transactions page and looking at a specific bank account from which you have contributed and you will see the actual account amount, amount contributed to SGs and an Available amount.
• There are two ways to withdraw from SGs.
  • You can Withdraw to Spend on Goal: This option will simply make the saved money "disappear" from the SG and from Simplifi.
  • You can Withdraw for another purpose: This option will return the money back into the account it came from - in your case back into your Checking balance.
• For the money not to go back into your checking balance, you will need to use "Withdraw to spend on Goal" which you have actually done with your monthly transfers to you investment account.

I'm not sure what you can do to correct the balance in your checking account if you have already deleted the SG but you can try this:

• Create a new SG and contribute the "extra" funds in the checking account that you had originally contributed to the first SG. Then make a Withdraw to spend on goal and see if that leaves you with the correct balance in Simplifi that corresponds with your balance in your actual account.

Someone else in the community or one of the Coaches will probably give you more info and insights about this.