Contribution to Savings Goal Not Being Acknowledged, Any Ideas?

DannyB

I contributed twice to one of my Savings Goals in April. But the SG is still showing that no contribution has been made.

I transfer $398 from checking to a savings account. Once the transfer is complete each month, I make a $198 contribution to the Auto Replacement SG and a $200 contribution to the Surprise and Miscellaneous SG. You can see the Auto Replacement SG shows that the contribution was made but the Surprise & Miscellaneous still shows Not contributed even though I did follow the process to make the contribution.

In April Quicken Simplifi added the ability to make SG contributions from investment accounts was activated for early access. I have early access turned on and took advantage of this new feature and made a second contribution to the Surprise & Miscellaneous SG equal to the balance of one of my investment accounts and updated the monthly contribution amount to $300 ($200 deposit to HYS and $100 deposit to investment account). But as you can see in the screenshot above this goal still shows "Not contributed."

On the By Account tab on the SG page, both accounts show that all but a bit of interest and gain is shown as designated for one of the two goals. This shows that contributions were made to the Surprise & Miscellaneous SG from both accounts, Savings and Investment.

When I look at the detail page for this SG this is what I see:

The one thing that seems odd to me is the amount reported under Monthly contribution: This month.

-$303.36

The "This month" amount should be somewhere around $1296.64.

I'm not sure what to make of this and will appreciate any insights or feedback on what this all means.

Coach Natalie

@DannyB, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

Though I'm not sure what could be causing this, I'm wondering if deleting and recreating the Savings Goal would resolve things for you. The only problems I can see with taking this route are: 1. You can't select two accounts that are already saved from when setting up the Goal, and 2. It's now a new month.

What do you think — do you want to give this a try? Let us know!

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

@Coach Natalie

Don't know why I didn't think to delete and recreate this goal as the quickest attempt at a solution.

So, I deleted and recreate the goal and added the amount available in my Synchrony account to the "Saved so far" field. So far, so good.

1. Adding funds from the second account is a problem since, as you point out, I can't select two accounts for already saved funds and contributions to the SG after creation come from my available cash in the current month and can't be added from a separate account once an SG is created.
2. The new month isn't a problem since the "Saved so far" using the available balance in the HYS account which already includes what would have been last month's contribution.

I believe the solution will be to create a separate SG for the investment account funds and future deposits.

DannyB

Disclaimer: The following may be a bit of nit picking so read at your leisure if interested.

What will be interesting to watch is how a Savings Goal that is based on an investment account will handle the inherent volatility of investment accounts. Perhaps not much since Savings Goal contributions affect the available amount in the Spending Plan only and not the actual real-world cash in the bank or investment account.

I haven't given this any thought before now, but my practice has been to add the interest to my monthly contribution to an SG.

Monthly transfer to savings: $100; Interest added to account by bank: $37; SG contribution $137.

This keeps the balance of the account aligned with the amount of the SG balance in the Accounts list and in the By Account page.

But - and this is where I have come to a new realization - the extra amount added to the contribution is not the money in that account but is taken from my Spending Plan available Income after bills and savings. It's a "virtual" thing.

However, I do include interest payments as recurring income in my Spending Plan, so I think it's a wash as far as my Spending Plan goes.

I'm not sure I can do this with an investment account-based SG since in any given month I may experience a lower balance due to market fluctuations.

Coach Natalie

@DannyB, I'm glad to hear you've got things worked out! It was most likely a bug you experienced, but that manual intervention you did allowed an immediate fix.

As for your ruminations on the Savings Goal staying aligned with Investment Account balance fluctuations, other users have mentioned the same desire (such as here). I think the best Idea post to cover something like this would be:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/584/1-1-map-a-savings-goal-to-an-account-edited

And possibly even this one, which is "in review":

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/947/ability-to-automatically-contribute-to-savings-goals-edited-5-merged-votes

You may want to also check this request out per what you experienced in this thread:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3449/ability-to-use-multiple-accounts-for-saved-so-far-in-savings-goal-setup-edited-1-merged-vote

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie