How do I include CC payments in spending plan? aka budgeting CC payments

Hi @Mrlinch,

First here are a couple of articles that will help with understanding how credit cards are handled in Simplifi.

1. How Are Credit Card Payments Handled in the Spending Plan
2. How Do Transfers Work

Using your example, for CC1, if you are not actively making charges to this CC you can set it up as a recurring bill for the minimum due and make sure to unselect "Ignore form Spending Plan."  Since the minimum due will change each month as you paydown the balance , you could use Bill Connect to have the monthly payment updated in your spending plan when your statement becomes available (if that CC company allows Bill Connect). You can always adjust how much that payment is going to be for a given month when you know whether or not you will have extra to put towards paying it off.  Again, if you want a set amount of your monthly available funds to go to this CC you can make it a recurring bill that is included in your Spending Plan and will be deducted from your anticipated income for the month.

For CC2, it sounds like you pay that one off every month.  That's what I do with the 3 CCs I use for our personal spending. As the above articles point out, Simplifi treats payment to CCs as transfers between bank accounts and will not by default include them in your monthly spending plan unless you choose to have them included by deselecting "Ignore from spending plan."  I suspect this is true of YNAB but it sounds like they have a way of keeping track of how much you will need in order to pay off the CC by the due date.

It's been awhile since I used Y*** and I only used it for a few months at that, but I beleive one of the main differences between the two is that YNAB works with income AFTER you receive it and Simplifi works with money you ANTICIPATE receiving in the current month and future months.  Another difference is the "give every dollar a job" rule in Y***.  Simplifi is a little more relaxed along those lines.

Just so you know, your CC balances as currently being reported by your CC companies are always available for you in the Accounts list that is always visible in the Dashboard and viewable in the Transactions view by using the the small arrow at the top of the page to view or hide the Accounts list.

For what it's worth, here is what I do.  I basically treat my CCs as an extension of my checking accounts and when the time comes to "balance" (i.e. payoff) one of our CCs I make a transfer from checking to the CC.  Since EVERYTHING charged to our CCs has been already categorized, incorporated into and accounted for in our Spending Plan, this transfer has no impact on the spending plan.  It is simply moving money from one account to another to cover already accounted for spending.  We charge a significant amount of our monthly spending to one or another of our CCs to benefit from the various rewards and cash back offers and we pay off all CCs every month.  This is not a problem since our spending has been planned for based on our income for a given month and we don't spend anything we haven't already covered in our Spending Plan including money in various Savings Goals or we may dip into the "Available" sometimes found at the bottom of the Spending Plan view.

Two of our CCs are set up to pay the full balance when due since what we charge to them is less then a couple hundred a month.  The third CC is the one we use the most and I make a payment every couple of weeks to bring the balance "current."  Again, these payments are ignored in our spending plan since this is simply a matter of moving money between accounts and not new spending.

This is a lot and I'm not sure it answers your question as well as it could be answered.  Before too long you will hear from one of the Coaches with more accurate information and insights as well perhaps from other community members as to how they handle CCs.

Hope this helps some.

@Mrlinch,

I'll keep my reply short since @DannyBand @Coach Natalie gave you such great feedback above.

I was never able to figure out YNAB so I don't know of the functionality your referring to in YNAB...I tried using it a couple times and it just didn't sync with my thinking for some reason.

Here's a post explaining how I set up my CC's (click here) starting in April 2022.  I've been using this method for awhile now (~8 months) and it still seems to be working well for me.  This method does give you the flexibility to enter whatever amount you decide to put towards the CC payment in any particular month.