Rollover Money - Where is it?

DannyB

Ok, yes, I do know where the funds that are being rolled over in my rollover planned spending buckets are residing in my bank accounts. But, those funds are all mixed up with each other and with undesignated moneys.

There is a feature request to implement some way to keep track of those set aside funds along the lines of the current Savings Goal feature: See here if interested.

In the meantime, I am now experimenting with a possible workaround by using Savings Goals to keep track of these funds in the accounts list. I am doing this by setting up a Savings Goal that is a mirror of a given planned spending rollover bucket. To keep the funds from being "double counted" in my Spending Plan I'm setting up the Savings Goal like this:

• Click to add a new SG
• Name the SG the same as the Planned Spending rollover bucket
• Goal amount is what I plan to spend for the year
• Select the account the rollover money is held in and the current months "available with rollover" amount.
• Click "Continue"
• Select "Don't set" for target goal date and monthly contribution is equal to my monthly Planned Spending amount.
• Click "Continue"
• Confirm numbers and select "No, don't set aside" (I think this is the key to making this work if it works at all.)
• Click on "Create goal"

Now I have a way to see exactly what is available to spend in in each cash account and what is designated for specific planned spending… more-or-less… and I believe this will allow me to keep track of designated funds without double counting these moneys in my Spending Plan.

Anticipated issues:

The main issue I anticipate relates to contributions and withdrawals from the mirror Savings Goals to keep track of these designated funds.

• I'll experiment with when to make a "contribution" to the mirror SG.
• I'll start with making a "contribution" at the first of the month.
• If I have an expenditure in a given planned spending rollover bucket, I will need to make sure I "withdraw" those funds from the mirror SG.
• One option is to make withdrawals as expenditures occur during the month.
• Another option is to adjust the amount in the SG at the end of the month based on the information in Planned Spending for the month in each rollover bucket.

If you read through this post and have any ideas or critiques, I'd appreciate the feedback.

DannyB

Update 1:

After setting up the SGs as described above and thinking about the timing of making "contributions," my thinking is that the best practice will be to make the contribution on the last day of the month.

My reasoning:

• The month begins with the full monthly target + the funds rolled over from previous months.
• As the month progresses, any spending in a rollover category will be charged against the monthly planned target category reducing what is available of that month's target amount.
• If the spending in the rollover category is less than the target amount for the month, the unused portion of the target amount is what will be rolled over (saved) and added to any rollover (savings) from previous months in the next month.
• Once any and all spending in the account has been deducted, I can then make a contribution to the mirror SG equal to the amount of the unspent target amount for the current month.
• Since the goal of this whole project is to be able to see how much of my account balances are designate and how much is undesignated, it seems to make sense to add only the unused target amount at the end of the month.

If the contribution is made at the beginning of the month in an amount equal to the full monthly target amount this would require making withdrawals either as each expense is incurred or a one-time end of month withdrawal which becomes unnecessary if only the unused amount is added to the SG at the end of the month.

Note: If the target amount is overspent for a rollover category, instead of a "contribution" I will make a "withdrawal to spend on goal" in the amount equal to the full amount spent for the month thus reducing the amount in the SG to reflect the reduced amount available in the rolled over portion of the planned spending category.

Flopbot

@DannyB ,

Now that you’ve used the rollover feature for a couple months, I’m curious about your thoughts on the following.

I used the rollover feature way back in the day with Quicken Desktop with mixed results. Then, I tried it briefly in Simplifi; I made it 2.5 months before I had to abandon it. Without a solid idea where the money was - like in your linked Idea Post - it felt a bit too much like creative accounting or cooking the books. I wonder if Rollover is something that really is best suited for those who make enough income to cover the lion-share of their monthly expenditures. For those who don’t fall into that category, that “rolled over” amount is easily spent five ways from Sunday by the end of the month.

What do you think?

Max1223

@Flopbot

You raise a good point. I was using Savings Goals before rollover was released. That too wasn't a perfect solution. While you could set aside money from an account, there was no register of deposit/withdrawals and you could still over spend monthly. I feel like using rollovers just moved expenses from one section to another in the Spending Plan.

I think one thing that made me think a little different about the Spending Plan is someone mentioned, it's a plan to show you what you might spend vs how much income you have. The Bills and Subs work great as its mostly predictable. The Planned Spending section is where you have to be watchful as you can be over or under at any given moment. Thus, understanding its a plan, I have rollovers there and use a combo of Reports and Watchlists to manage what I actually spend. For most months, I have to actually spend less than my Planned Spending so that I'm not doing what you say "easily spent five ways from Sunday…" Still not perfect.

I'm contemplating using Savings again for a few things…but want to try another month with rollovers before I make changes.

Curious, how are you accounting for what you used to have in rollovers?

DannyB

@Flopbot

There was a record album our kids used to listen to that had songs for each of the fruits of the spirit, I believe you are familiar with those. One of the fruits of the spirit is self-control. (I find it worth contemplating that the first fruit is love and the final fruit is self-control, but that's a subject for another sermon.) My point here is that any plan or budget is only as good as my ability to first, be honest and realistic about my needs, wants, and future thinking, and second, my level of maturity, i.e., my ability to exercise self-control. With that in mind here is my way over the top response to your question.

I agree with your "it felt a bit too much like creative accounting or cooking the books." This is what I meant by my "if you ain't got it in the bank, you ain't got it in the app no matter what the app says" type comments in other discussions about rollover and Savings Goals.

Just because you have funds "accumulating" in the Planned Spending for certain expenses doesn't mean the money is there in the real world. If you don't wall off those accumulating funds in the real world so you can't easily spend them "five ways form Sunday by the end of the month" as you say, then the rollover feature becomes a false image of reality and will lead to what relying on any false image leads to…. some level of disaster.

I'm not as sure about the "lion-share" though I understand what you are saying. I think the idea of using a budget is to make sure the lion-share of your monthly income is spent appropriately. But I am also familiar with having to make monthly income stretch from paycheck-to-paycheck and no matter how much planning is done on paper (or in an app like QS) if the cash ain't there it simply ain't there.

I think that if used appropriately, the rollover feature can be a powerful tool as long as you make sure "rolled over funds" remain rolled over in the real world and are thus available for the designated expenses. I believe it can be a powerful tool to get to where you are not spending the rolled over funds "five ways from Sunday by the end of the month." I also believe that the feature needs further development in QS to help with that process.

Right now, I am comfortable with my set up and usage of the rollover feature. My original request and support for this feature and my current use of the rollover feature is to be able to bring my non-monthly, annual/semi-annual fixed and flexible expenses into my monthly Spending Plan. I DO NOT use this feature to "bolster" or "smooth out" my routine monthly flexible expenses.* But, IMHO, having rollover without a mechanism to counter spending the rolled over funds seems to make the implementation less powerful. This is my motivation for finding a way to "set aside" or account for rollover funds somewhere in QS which I believe will also answer your concern about "creative accounting or cooking the books."

Here is a snapshoot of what my current set up looks like using SGs as outlined above:

I am designating a portion of my monthly income to my annual property tax bill. Once I designate that money each month, it is NO LONGER available for general fund spending. But unless I wall off the money and exercise a bit (or perhaps more than a bit) of self-control, that money will not be there when the tax bill comes due. For me, in the real world, this means setting up an automatic monthly transfer of the designated funds OUT of my cash account and into a separate savings account for my FIXED annual/semi-annual expenses (insurance premiums, property tax, etc.). When I'm done setting up my mirror SGs the Cap1 Fixed Expense and Cap1 Travel Savings will look like my Synchrony HYS account showing $0.00 available - it's a work in progress.**

On the other hand, I have those non-monthly irregular flexible expenses like house repairs, auto repairs, birthdays and of course our national obsession of Christmas gift giving. I want these expenses in my monthly plan also and, in my mind, the rollover feature is most specifically designed for these types of expenses. The rollover funds for these planned spending expenses stay in my checking account for convenience's sake and having a mechanism to show them as separate from any undesignated money in my checking account is for me an important if not critical feature to have in order to at least help me NOT spend that money except for how it is designated.***

@Max1223 I do have two Spending Plan tracked Savings Goals set up. But I have found, so far, that the Planned Spending rollover feature has made my SG page much less complicated. 😁 I'm just now setting up untracked SGs for my rollover categories to see if this is a workable way to keep track of these funds in my QS account balances.

Footnotes:

*The idea that if I have some "money" left in my grocery budget from this month to spend next month is in my mind nonsense and even more so for entertainment or whatever. I have a set amount I plan for certain flexible expenses based on my expected income for the month, priority of the expense, and historical spending in that category adjusted for the inevitable increase in the cost-of-living year over year. If I need to, I can make adjustments to other monthly flexible expenses to compensate for overspending in any given flexible expense category. But I don't see the need to "rollover" my routine monthly flexible expenses nor to I think it helpful to ding next month's planned spend to cover this month's overspend.

**My idea is along the lines of how I set up my contributions to charitable organizations. When I give to my local church, the funds I give are "undesignated" and can be used for any part of the church's budget as needed. However, when I give to my denomination, I designate how that gift is to be used: $xxx.xx is to be used for World Relief; $xxx.xx is to be used for Ministers Crisis Fund; $xxx.xx is undesignated and goes into the general fund to be used as needed. The organization can only spend my donations in the manner I have designated. I want rollover to work along these lines.

***For me, the trick is to NOT use my real-world bank balance when making a spending decision nor even to use the QS account balance with the SG funds deducted… but to use my Spending Plan "balance" since that is where my "real" available for the month is reflected… if I have a realistic and honest Spending Plan.

Max1223

@DannyB

I do keep an eye on spending plan Available, but I think that can be misleading as well.

So one thing i just did based on this string, was to make two Watchlists.

Watchlist 1 is a NON Rollover list. It includes all things in Planned Spending that are NOT rollovers: groceries, dining out, etc. (agree on how you use/don't use rollovers). This gives me a real sense of how much i'm spending here. The target line in the watchlist is a nice visual aid here. I find that if I can stick to this number, between bills and this list, I'm fine.

Watchlist 2 is for Rollover items: Auto Reg, Repairs, Taxes, the larger items that I want to plan some monthly savings so when the bill comes, the funds are there. This list again shows how I'm doing over time. While there is an average target that can be calculated, its a little less helpful since some bills, like taxes, are large and skew the graphs. I still use the average line though as one data point. Seems the key here is to have many months BELOW the line to make up for the months that go way about average.

For me, its more helpful to see what I'm actually spending to hit goals. If I can do this, then I know money is available when I get the larger Rollover expenses. The way I see it is you can't save money if it isnt there in the first place.

Max

Flopbot

@Max1223

You asked: "Curious, how are you accounting for what you used to have in rollovers?"

Fortunately for me, I wasn't using Rollover long enough to come to rely on it. It was a VERY short test with just my 'Diapers' category in Planned Spending. I couldn't get passed the feeling that the extra money it showed each month wasn't really there so I didn't have anything to do with that money when my test ended…it wasn't there to begin with.

Instead, I went back to my trusted methods of multiple separate Savings Accounts for various key, critical things…

And a variety of Savings Goals for the other random stuff. Specifically, ALL my Savings Goals are tied to just two (2) savings accounts; one is labeled as "ST SG" (Short Term Savings Goal) above. With Simplifi's Savings Goals, I love that it shows this info right in the account lists. If I ever see the Available Balance as anything other than $0, then I know I have deposits/withdrawals to make into my Savings Goals. My goal is always zero.

Don't know if this answers your question.

Max1223

@Flopbot

Thanks for sharing, can you clarify, I see 7 real savings accounts. wow, that's diligent! You say you only use 2 accounts with ALL your Savings Goals? Then how do you use the other 5 accounts? I would have thought if you are moving money within real banks, then it seems like you wouldn't even need QS Savings Goals since to your point, each savings account shows up in the Accounts list. I guess one thing QS SG could help with is how much you need to save each month to hit a goal. Sort of helpful.

thanks

Max

Flopbot

@Max1223 ,

Right, I have two accounts that are linked to all my Savings Goals. One is called Short Term" goals and one is called "Long Term" goals. When I've done my work right, those accounts always look like the screenshot above with the available balance set to $0. When money is transferred to either of those accounts, the $0 changes to $25 or -$450 or something and then I know I need to assign that money to the associated Savings Goal to bring the available amount back to $0.

For the other real-world accounts, they are for the 'most important' things like Auto, B-Days, Christmas, Education, Emergency, & Home. For these savings accounts, I view the entire account as a de facto 'savings goal' for that one thing. This means that ANY money that somehow finds itself in the account is AUTOMATICALLY assumed to be for ____ and only for that. The 🎉 symbol indicates that I'm transferring money into them either weekly, bi-weekly, or each paycheck to consistently build them up. Yes, there are a number of them (savings accounts), but my bank gives them away for free so I might as well take advantage of them. I do my mock reconciliation each month when the statement comes in the mail and - most recently - I'm working up the nerve to just shred the statements after that…someday, I'll do it, it just seems so unlike me. Then, when I spend money to fix the car, I just transfer that exact amount of money out of the SAV and back into CHK. To make this easiest, the CHK and SAV are both with the same bank so transfers are instantaneous.

The reality, is that I have many more things that I want to save money for that I have capacity to set up individual real-world SAV accounts for them. That's where Savings Goals come back into play. They're usually the things that don't get this 🎉 symbol beside them; things that money only occasionally gets put towards.

I DO LIKE Simplifi's Savings Goals, I'm just too lazy - don't have time - to do a ton of deposits/withdrawals into imaginary goals. This then seems to be a good real-world balance using some Savings Goals and some Savings Acounts. Someday, I really look forward to Simplifi adding some automation to their Savings Goal feature at which time I'm happy to reconsider my setup.

Flopbot

@DannyB ,

Any post that starts with the fruits of the spirit in kid's song form is going to be good.

You had two really good - and profoundly deep - quotes:

"Then the rollover feature becomes a false image of reality and will lead to what relying on any false image leads to…. some level of disaster."

"I believe it can be a powerful tool to get to where you are not spending the rolled over funds "five ways from Sunday by the end of the month." I also believe that the feature needs further development in QS to help with that process."

I agree wholeheartedly with both of those quotes and voted accordingly on your associated Idea Post. If Simplifi could just include something like in my screenshot above - can't figure out how to take a screenshot on this computer! - where it shows the Available Balance is $0 after Savings Goals AND then also include a line for Rolled Over Spending, that would be wonderfully helpful in dispelling one false image.