Ability to apply released Planned Spending funds to a Savings Goal (edited)

Emacken
Emacken Member ✭✭
edited January 9 in Feature Requests

I posted this as a comment in "We want your feedback on the Spending Plan!", but I think it's really more of a separate request: when releasing funds from a Spending Plan category, it would be great to have an option to put those funds directly towards a Savings Goal instead of releasing to general spending. I think this would be helpful in a couple of different situations:

  1. It would mimic a rollover feature with (hopefully) less difficulty in coding it: you could release unspent funds in the Gas category to a 'Gas Overflow' savings goal, and then withdraw from it in a future month if you needed extra funds for gas.
  2. It would make it simpler to see the progress when saving unspecified amounts: suppose I want to cut back on the amount I'm spending on restaurants so that I can afford to take a trip to Florida. I don't have a particular date for the trip in mind, and I'm not sure how much I'll save on restaurants each month when I set up the plan, but I know roughly how much it would cost. In this case, I could release unspent money from my Restaurants category directly to the Florida Trip savings goal, and whenever I hit the target I can plan the trip.

3a, sort of, because this would require a separate coding effort: an option to contribute all unspent funds at the end of the month towards a goal. Currently we don't have an option to backdate goal contributions, so if I'm dedicating all unspent funds at the end of the month to my emergency fund, I have to log in exactly on the last day of every month to allocate exactly that amount (and then avoid any late-night online purchases). Otherwise, if I had $200 left at the end of November, and went in on December 2nd to allocate that to my emergency fund, it would instead count as a contribution for December (and put me over my Spending Plan if I would otherwise have had $150 left instead of @$200).

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  • ajbopp
    ajbopp Member ✭✭✭✭

    What would you expect to happen if you had minus $200 left at the end of November?

    Anthony Bopp
    Simplifi User Since July 2022
    Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye

  • Emacken
    Emacken Member ✭✭

    I suppose whatever currently happens if you go over your spending plan? I haven't quite figured out that part, I've only been using Simplifi for two months. Wouldn't you just have less money in your checking to start the next month?

    Or if you're doing a YNAB-style "assign every dollar", I suppose you could have a "life happens/unexpected expenses/whatever" savings goal, and withdraw from that?

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