Savings vs. savings goals?

Whitecap

Regular savings vs. “savings goals” are two different things, it seems.

We have an iPad and want to help track our income (simplifi works well), our spending (simplifi works well), and our SAVINGS (simplifi not so well - so far). These are the three basics of every financial software. Where are we going wrong?

We recently went with quicken simplifi, to track out savings contributions in our money market, Health Savings Account, Back Door Roths, 401k contributions pre pre-paycheck received, company contributions, and our IBond accounts…….. we having trouble doing any of these.

Can anyone give me insights on how to set this up? I’m sure I am just not understanding how to do it correctly. All I can see are the “savings goals” option, where we hook a savings goal to an account, with the intent to take those savings from that account and spend it on something else. We don’t want to do that. We want to save for the future and track our progress, which reaffirms our goals.

I’m sure I’m missing something here. Please help me figure this out.

Many thanks in advance,

Whitecap

DannyB

@Whitecap

I believe you more or less nail it when you observe, "All I can see are the “savings goals” option, where we hook a savings goal to an account, with the intent to take those savings from that account and spend it on something else."

I think you have to keep in mind that, as far as I understand it, the Savings Goal feature was originally designed and continues to be set up as a way to track money you are saving to spend on something specific and not as a long-term retirement/investment account tracking feature. Here is the opening sentence from the Savings Goal support article, "Quicken Simplifi’s Savings Goals can help you easily plan for your future, whether you're planning a vacation, buying a home, or anything in between!" Notice the absence of any mention of long-term retirement savings in that sentence.

However, now that you can "contribute" to savings goals from investment accounts, you certainly can create a savings goal for a given investment account, but I'm not sure it will be very helpful or give you what I think you are looking for.

Have you explored the Investment section of Simplifi? This section is designed to track investment accounts like the ones you mention. If you are able to connect to your investment institution(s) you can set these up as connected and Simplifi will automatically download all your transactions for these accounts. You can also set up manual investment accounts if you can't connect to your brokers institution.

You can also set up recurring transfers for your routine contributions to these accounts. Unfortunately, QS doesn't currently support setting up splits in recurring series, (this is a highly requested feature and is in review) so you will need to manually add paycheck deductions/contributions is payday.

On the Investment screen you can see your Portfolio, Balances, Performance and have access to all your Transactions. You have the ability to which account(s) you want to view on each page and can view multiple accounts if desired.

Whitecap

Hi DannyB,

Thank you for your kind and helpful email.

I have indeed linked up all our investment accounts to simplifi. It does a fine job updating each account t balance and tracking g all transactions. Unfortunately, it does not track the pre-paycheck contributions into the 401k, or the additions from the company and address those contributions as our savings toward the future.

I think you nailed it. We are indeed long term savers, who are trying to visualize our path as we fund our retirement. So far, Simplifi seems to be a powerful budgeting tool, tracking spending, investments, and income very efficiently. But for us, it seems to fall just a bit short in the long term savings department. Can the other forms of quicken be used on an iPad ? I’m hopeful we can stay with the quicken products, as we like what we see, for the most part.

[removed - no soliciting]

Thank you again for your kindness and information.

Best regards,

Whitecap