Spending Plan vs. Watchlists - Aren't they almost the same (or Watchlists a subset of Spending Plan?

flintster_99

Hi, I'm new to Simplifi but a long-time Quicken user. I'm having a hard time conceptualizing the differences between 'Spending Plan' and 'Watchlists'. Is it true that if you set up a spending plan, there really is no need for 'watchlist' items - because the monitoring is in the Spending Plan? I see notifications can be enabled for each individually.

Conversely, is a 'Watchlist' item simply an easier way to get notified of spending limits, if you don't want to go through the bother of creating a spending plan?

UrsulaA

Some examples may help understand watchlists. I use watchlists to:

1. Track groups of categories or tags that I do not use monthly (example vacation).
2. See average spending for rolling 12 months for some of my recurring bills (example insurance, which is listed under two parent categories, financial and auto), which I have set up as recurring bills and not planned expenses. The spending plan requires to create budgets based on categories (parent or child) and recurring items.
3. Track other spending, which is not accounted for in the spending plan. I set targets for these on the watchlist as I know I spend some funds on categories not in the spending plan, but I do not use these categories monthly. I do not want to clutter planned spending with tiles I do not need to look at monthly.
4. I keep a watchlist with all categories selected to see my average expenses over the last 12 months. The reports section does not display averages, just totals.

I have been using Simplifi for a month now and came from Mint. Mint did not have watchlists.

flintster_99

Thank you, this all makes sense!