Frustrated with my spending plan due to irregular recurring bills

WehoCoder

I think I've got everything initialized, but as I scroll through my spending plan from this month to the next, and so forth, I'm running into months where I will have overspent.

Coming in Feb 2024 I have an annual bill (car insurance) come due. And based upon my spending plan, I will have to pull money out of thin air to be able to live this month.

I see I can manually adjust my spending plan for that month — maybe less dining out, less coffee shops. However, consistency is key for me.

I realize everyone will want something different, but what good does it do to enter these recurring bills under the recurring bills section, rather than entering them as savings goals?

I wish Simplifi was smart enough to ask me to set aside dollars to cover these recurring bills that don't happen every month. I realize this overlaps the savings goal functionality, but it seems it'd be much simpler if they combined the savings goal functionality in with the recurring bills functionality.

WehoCoder

Ok, after more searching, I see a lot of complaints regarding this exact issue. It seems people are degrading spending plans to be able to account for expenses that do not follow the monthly spending plan cycle. Sad day. From what I have witnessed with my friend group, irregular recurring bills are what has gotten the most of them into financial trouble. How has this not been accounted for in Simplifi Money? Now I want to look for a new budgeting tool that can handle this. Any alternative suggestions? I see that Simplifi does regular releases which is great, but it seems most of the releases are lists of fixes and not new functionality.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/13478#Comment_13478

Coach Natalie

@WehoCoder, thanks for sharing your feedback with the Community!

Yes, we have an existing request here for the ability to break down less frequent bills to a monthly amount in the Spending Plan that I'd definitely suggest checking out:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1199/break-down-annual-bi-annual-expenses-to-a-monthly-amount-in-spending-plan-edited-6-merged-votes

In the meantime, we have a #TipTuesday that goes over how you can accomplish this with Savings Goals:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3446/tiptuesday-using-savings-goals-to-break-down-annual-bi-annual-expenses-in-the-spending-plan

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie