Savings Goals and Ongoing Budgeting

Jordan G

Hi, I have moved over from Mint and had two questions that keep coming up while I finish setting up my Simplifi Account.

1. We are planning a big trip in April 2024, I attempted to use a savings goal to account for that trip in my budgeting. I estimate the trip to be roughly $12k. I already have the money in a bank account. But I was hoping that as we purchase flights, hotels, etc… leading up to April I could chunk away at the expected $12k expense. Like instead of those items counting toward my Entertainment budget, I could select it to my April 2024 Trip Savings goal and it would deduct from that. Is there a way to do this in Simplifi?
2. A similar question, but different is budgeting month over month. Our budget isn't rigid for certain things. Entertainment as an example. I like to know that over the course of the year I'll spend around X on Entertainment, but I enjoy not spending as much for a series of months knowing I'll have a need for that extra money that is unspent for a later month where I will overspend on it. Mint handled this pretty well, where I could see the carry-over from the previous month (or how much I am in the hole from the previous month). Is this possible in Simplifi?

Thanks for the help, much appreciated,

Jordan

DannyB

Hi @Jordan G Welcome to Q-Simplifi but sorry this is a "forced" move from Mint. From what I've seen in the forum lately this has been a rough transition for a lot of folks.

In response to 1.

Unfortunately, we are not currently able link transactions to Saving Goals at this time.

• I set up a "Travel" savings goal each year like you have done. I start a new goal at the beginning of each year with whatever I have left from the year the year just past and then make monthly contributions that add up to what I plan to spend on travel for the year. For example, I currently have $6600 in my 2023 Travel SG and we don't have any more plans to travel in 2023. In January 2024 I will zero out this SG returning the unused funds to my genera cash account. Then I will create a new Travel 2024 SG and add those funds as the beginning balance with monthly contributions set up that will appear in my Spending Plan in the Income after bills & saving, Savings Goals section.
• Next, I have a Savings Goals Category with sub-categories for various trips we plan for the year. Right now we have a Hawaii trip and we will be planning a few road trips. These will all have their own sub-category. When I spend against any of those trips I will assign the expense to the appropriate sub-category and exclude the expense from my Spending Plan.
• By tracking each expense in a Savings Goals sub-category I can keep track of how much I spend on each trip and keep track of how much to withdraw from the Travel SG to spend on the travel goal.
• You can also use tags to help keep track of your travel expenses as they come along.

I know this seems like a work around… that's because it is. You might want to add your vote to this feature request that would address this issue and make this process more straight forward.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1814/allow-savings-goals-to-have-full-functionality-of-other-accounts

In response to 2.

I will assume that you have a Planned Spending category for Entertainment. At this time there is no way to roll over "left over" funds from one month to the next. The work around that comes to mind is the Savings Goal idea. I do this with my auto and home maintenance and repair funds. I will spend money of these things throughout the year, but it will very month-to-month and seasonally. Thus I have a pool of money I contribute to monthly and draw from when needed.

It appears that Q-Simplifi's development team is now actively working on adding some kind of rollover feature to Simplifi. I have no idea what that will look like if/wen launched or how it would work, but your Entertainment scenario might be something that would be addressed with a rollover feature.