Do meal kits such as HelloFresh count as a subscription?

GCA

I’m struggling with whether or not I should create a series for HelloFresh? 90% of the time it orders once per week automatically unless I need to skip a week.

However it does feel a bit weird seeing my subscriptions in my spending plan increase by $300/mo by adding it.

If I do add it, then I would also probably need to subtract $300 from my groceries spending plan category and categorize HelloFresh as a subscription instead so that I don’t budget for it twice.

But is this a weird setup? Should I just not act like it’s a subscription and pretend it’s me going to the grocery store the same day every week and not create a series out of it?

GCA

update: Hm, it appears that if a transaction under a category for planned spend (such as Groceries) is part of a subscription series, it does not factor into the planned spend remaining amount, so it looks like this will work?

Am I understanding correctly?

RobWilk

In general, things don't appear in more than one place on the spending plan.. So if they're under 'income after bills & savings', they won't appear under 'planned spending' or 'other spending.'

DannyB

Hi @GCA

This is completely a choice on your part. As you discovered, if you set up your HelloFreah as a recurring subscription (or recurring bill for that matter) that expense won’t be counted in your Planned Spending category for groceries. Therefore you won’t want to include funds in your Planned Spending category for groceries that goes to the HelloFresh recurring subscription. On the other hand you can simply create a rule to categorize HelloFresh as a grocery expense and let it be assigned to your Planned Spending category for groceries. Either way you are accounting for this expense in your over all Spending Plan.

Personally, I would do the second, simply assign it to my grocery category which in turn includes it in my Planned Spending category and account for this grocery expense in Planned Spending rather than as a recurring subscription. I have no particular reason for this other than personal preference.

Coach Natalie

@GCA, I'd personally also do what Danny is suggesting — categorize it as Groceries and let it be counted toward Planned Spending. But either way will work. 🙂

-Coach Natalie

RobWilk

But the advantage of setting it up as a recurring bill/subscription, is it is reflected in the cash flow forecast — if it truly is a regular expense.

GCA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/18712#Comment_18712

May I ask why that would be your preference? I'm inclined to follow the way that the experts have been doing it, but I do like that the repetition is reflected in my forecasted spend, since only on rare occasion would I not be ordering HelloFresh in a week.

DannyB

@GCA

This really is a user preference choice. There is no "best practices" for this particular instance. As @RobWilk points out, by setting it up as a recurring subscription you gain the advantage of your HelloFresh appearing in your cash flow forecast which sounds like, for you, is a best practice. As a recurring expense it will not be counted twice if you also have a Planned Spending category to set aside funds for all other grocery purchases not covered by the HelloFresh meals.

I would choose to track this in my Planned Spending simply because it is part of my grocery spending and that is more a matter of a minor bit of OCD on my part rather than any kind of actual accounting logic. Either way you will be able to see all your grocery spending in reports and, if you want, you could set up a Watchlist to bring all grocery spending into one watch list.

Coach Natalie

@GCA, yes, it's just my preference. I use Quicken Simplifi for my personal finances as well. 🙂

-Coach Natalie

Flopbot

@GCA

One thing to consider if you do choose to track HelloFresh as a Subscription is that there is currently no way to cancel and then turn back on any given recurring subscription. One thing that I found with our family and those boxes was that we were constantly trying different boxes (ex. HelloFresh, EveryPlate, etc.) and then pausing random ones for days/weeks/months. If you did decide to stop using HelloFresh for a time - and then come back to it - you can’t just cancel the Recurring Subscription and restart it. You have to skip each month’s occurrence.

Therefore, I’d only recommend using the Subscription route if you’ve decided that HelloFresh is the right fit for you.

Somewhere, there’s an Idea Post about that if it was something you’d want.

In our case, we stopped using food subscription boxes pretty early on in my Simplifi journey since my wife is such a crazy good cook. They just didn’t make sense for us. That was my one main takeaway from the experience.