New to Simplifi. Thoughts and Questions about Savings Goals

Glimmer3721

At our Credit Union, we have an extra 20 accounts that we use as "savings buckets", Christmas, Auto Maintenance, etc.

When we have an expense that correlates with one of those savings buckets, we simply transfer the same amount from our savings bucket account into checking and the charge is offset. For example, let's say I have 2,000 in my Auto Maintenance account and I have a 500 repair bill. We'll pay the bill with our credit card, transfer 500 from the Auto Maintenance account and pay 500 towards our credit card bill.

I'm wondering if I should stop using these 20 accounts as savings buckets and instead use Simplifi's Savings Goals feature.

Since I'm new, I'll off my fresh perspective regarding how I would want/expect this to work with Simplifi

Let's say I have $5000 in my savings account and $2000 is allocated to Auto Maintenance using a Savings Goal.

I pay my $500 repair bill with my credit card as normal.

My charge shows up in Simplifi from my credit card company and I mark the category as Auto Maintenance.

When it's time to pay my credit card bill, I transfer $500 from savings to checking and categorize the transfer as Auto Maintenance. Then I pay my credit card bill.

If I mark the charge, and the transfer as Auto Maintenance, my expectation is that Simplifi should see that those are linked, and automatically lower the amount of the money in my Auto Maintenance savings goal by $500. And the incoming charge from the credit card company shouldn't be counted against my monthly spending.

At the very least, I would expect Simplifi to see that the categories and the amounts are the same and ask me in the transaction if they are the same and track things the way I discussed above. If I have my Savings Goal named the same thing as one of my categories, my expectation is that they would be linked somehow.

Switching to opinion mode…

I think it's a bit strange that I could collect money from different accounts to count towards a savings goal. What percentage of users would actually do this? I would expect that most people who are saving for upcoming expenses and want to use multiple buckets, wouldn't split money towards a savings goal from multiple accounts. That seems… complicated. I would expect that most users would simply designate an account where they save everything and split the money in that account into savings buckets. But I suppose that for large expenses, such as down payments and such, that would make sense. But then you could simply have Savings Goal 1 as "Down Payment (a)" and Savings Goal 2 as "Down Payment (b)" or something like that, one for each savings account.

From what I've read, the workflow for Savings Goals is a bit challenging for end users. I'd probably suggest asking users in a questionnaire how they would want Savings Goals to function and then code towards that workflow.

Based on what I'm seeing so far, since Simplifi is so good at matching transfer transactions, it's probably better for me to use my multiple Credit Union accounts as savings buckets rather than using Savings Goals, and simply marking an incoming bill from my credit card as not counted against my spending plan.

Thanks!

RobWilk

It's personal preference, if you're okay managing 20 accounts and are used to it, no reason to change it.

As per multiple accounts contributing to savings goals, again, I agree with you, but at the same time having the option to choose the account to contribute from or withdraw to is a good thing I think. It does show you in the goal how much came from each account I believe.

Glimmer3721

@RobWilk

I gave a longer response in my other question but wanted to follow-up for others…

After thinking about Savings Goals, and the Spending Plan, the biggest concept we need to understand is that Simplifi wants us to think about savings and spending across accounts as an aggregate. If we can switch our thinking away from individual accounts and balances and strive to look at this as a whole, the concept of being able to have a Savings Goal from multiple accounts makes sense.

We have to switch our way of thinking from the traditional checking and savings accounts to this aggregate way. Where the money is stored matters second to how we use the money as a whole.

Thank you.

Flopbot

@Glimmer3721 ,

Hey, interesting question and post. Thanks for all the added details. You're right that Simplifi's current build with Savings Goals is designed to function more like an aggregate of savings across multiple accounts including both Savings Accounts and even Checking Accounts. To me, that seems very odd, but I know there are others in this community @DannyB @ajbopp who seem to be utilizing Savings Goals as Simplifi intended and be successful with it.

For me, I'm very happy with the way I'm using Savings Goals and have spelled out the details in this post…

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/4567/my-savings-goals-simply-work

The way I use them isn't exactly as designed, but I think the three main differences that I've made are:

• I have multiple SG's and each SG is tied to ONLY one (1) real world savings account. While multiple SG's might all relate to money in the same account, I don't aggregate funds from multiple accounts into one SG. Said another way, one SG = transactions from one Savings Account.
• I ignore every SG from the Spending Plan. I'm not sure this is the best idea, but it seems to have worked for me so far.
• For me, any account that has regularly scheduled deposits into it is a real world savings account - not a SG. For example, lets say I deposit $x from each paycheck to a savings account for Auto Expenses, B-Days, & Christmas. Each of these would be a separate real world savings account and there are NO SG's tied to any of these accounts since ANY money the shows up in them is, by default, reserved for that sole use. All total, lets say, there are 3 of these dedicated savings accounts and 2 savings accounts that are linked to multiple SG's.

For your 20 accounts, KUDO's for being able to manage all of them! It's really up to you how you want to handle them like Rob said. I'd probably keep some for your dedicated automatic deposits (auto, Christmas, etc.), keep a couple for use with SG's (shorter term, longer term SG's), and archive the rest. BUT I'm no accountant or CPA or anything so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, the reason I do it this way is that Simplifi's current build is missing some key functionality (ex. a log of prior transactions, better integration with day-to-day bank transactions) that I want in place before being willing to switch to the aggregation approach.

Glimmer3721

@Flopbot

Thanks for the additional detail. I'll probably adopt your workflow.

For your 20 accounts, KUDO's for being able to manage all of them! It's really up to you how you want to handle them like Rob said. I'd probably keep some for your dedicated automatic deposits (auto, Christmas, etc.), keep a couple for use with SG's (shorter term, longer term SG's), and archive the rest.

I think that I'll use these extra accounts for expenses that are outside the current month. Any other existing categories that have expenses inside the current month, probably doesn't really need their own account, Utilities, for example.

We're taking our Simplifi transition slowly. The first thing we're doing is getting into a routine of categorizing our spending.

Except for one problem with my transaction imports, I've really enjoyed Simplifi and like the way it's designed from a conceptualized perspective.

DannyB

Hi @Glimmer3721 … Welcome to Simplifi!

I just finished reading through this conversation and thought I'd throw in my own thoughts. First, WOW! 20 accounts! With @Flopbot - KUDOS!

There is a lot going on in your post and it looks like you are working through things pretty well. You will find much of your questions, thinking and suggestions repeated by others elsewhere in this forum.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to "collect money from different accounts to count towards a savings goal." I don't think that is the intended design but it can be done based on how the whole contributions to goals works. You just have to pay attention when my make a contribution that you intentionally choose the from account. I missed that way back when I was first getting started and ended up with a bit of a mess! Now I keep the funds for a given SG in ONE account. I may have money in one account that is designated for several different SGs but all the money for each unique SG is kept in only one account.

With a nod toward KISS, I do keep the funds for such SGs as Gifting (birthdays, Christmas), auto and home maintenance and repairs, in my regular checking account since these tend to be more random but also closer to monthly type spending that I want to accumulate funds towards so it's available when needed. For other SGs I move the money to specific savings accounts since these funds tend to sit longer before using. One feature I find to be very helpful is that Simplifi keeps track of how much money in a given account is set aside for SGs and how much is available for spending or saving and shows me this in my account list.

As far as I can tell, the whole idea of Savings Goals in Simplifi is intended for long term savings for such things as auto purchases, downpayment for a house, emergency fund, that type of thing. I'm pretty sure SGs were never intended to use for what would typically be handled by some type of rollover feature and thus there is no mapping of SGs to either accounts or expenses. Using SGs as I've described is a workaround and an awkward one at that.

Glimmer3721

@DannyB

You said: One feature I find to be very helpful is that Simplifi keeps track of how much money in a given account is set aside for SGs and how much is available for spending or saving and shows me this in my account list.

I hadn't thought about this. Thank you for the idea. I believe you're saying that I could keep everything in a single account and just apportion some of the money towards savings goals without actually having to transfer it to a different account. Does that sound right?

I don't think I would actually leave money that I don't spend in the same month in my checking account. But I could see how this could be useful for having a single savings account. Instead of me having a bunch of separate accounts to use as savings buckets, I could have a single account and just have savings goals in the savings account to accomplish the same purpose.

Might be nice if there was a test account I could use to practice with some of these features.

DannyB

One idea I’ve heard about is to have two checking accounts that, in essence, would be used just as you’re thinking. One checking account would correspond to your monthly spending plan and one account would correspond to non monthly expenses. Using Savings Goals to keep track of the various uses they are saved for would seem to me easier than having multiple real world savings accounts you are transferring money in and out.

But, yes, it would definitely be simpler to hold all savings for non monthly spending in one account and use SGs to keep track of what you expect to spend it on.

Flopbot

@Glimmer3721

You said "Might be nice if there was a test account I could use to practice with some of these features." If you want this to be considered for inclusion, then you'll need to create an "Idea Post" so other forum members can vote on it.

Also, don't forget that you can create test accounts whenever you wish and then just delete them. I've done that before by just creating a manual checking account, testing my idea, and then deleting it when done.