We want your feedback on the Spending Plan!
Comments
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[removed] The ability to change the dates for the spending plan is key to me and others that are paid twice a month, not monthly. I budget by paycheck and to balance the paychecks out might pay a bill early. Example: I am paid on 10th and 25th. Power Bill is due the 18th. I instead pay it on the 10th.
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Add notes to the spending plan. Often with two people it is easy to forget how the money is being allocated.
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This may have already been said, but it would be super helpful to have an option to see all 12 months at once for budgeting purposes to account for seasonality in electricity, water, large planned expenses, etc. Versus having to click month by month to see things and make changes.
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I agree - best thing about spreadsheets, but can also be implemented in an app (maybe only web based).
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I don't really use rollover, but I need to be able to customize my budget in two-week increments, since I budget paycheck to paycheck for my flexible spending categories (groceries, gas, etc) I'd like to see what is left over as well. I have used the Numbers Budget in ICloud and like it, however it's all manual which makes it hard for couples to update instantly.
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YES! Everyone budgets differently and the ability to customize is so important!
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Hi @tylertyler I was doing some catch-up reading of comments in this thread and saw your comment about rollovers.
The "best practice" at this time is to use Savings Goals (SGs) for the types of expenses you mention. I'm not sure you can call using SGs for "rollover" type expenses efficient, but it's probably the best option for now. There are a number of posts relating to how Simplifi users are using SGs but basically you can create a SG for each of the expenses you describe above.
For example, you can create a savings goal for Home Improvement Projects. The goal amount would be the total of what you would set aside for the year, i.e. $150*12 = $1800. Your monthly contribution will, of course, be $150 and you will check off to set aside in the spending plan. Then each month you will contribute $150 to this SG. Then each time you spend money on a home improvement project you will select to ignore the expense from you spending plan and reports. You can track the total amount spent on home improvements using tags and can even set up a watchlist to keep taps over the year on how much you spend month-to-month and ytd.
A couple of things to consider: 1) where to put the SG designated funds in your real world accounts; 2) How to handle the movement of funds in your real world accounts.
I suggest reading the support article on Savings Goals if you haven't already done so. Hope that gives you some ideas.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer3 -
Hello,
I'm new to Simplifi, I have been with Mint for several years and love it but hear it's migrating with Credit Karma soon. A few suggestions:
- Add a roll over feature for unused spending vs. planned each month (like Mint)
- See current spending on Spending Plan tile, you have to go to reports to view this now. Should be on same page as planned spending
- Shrink size of spending plan tiles so you can view all on one screen and not have to scroll down. Like Mint does.
Thank you
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I would like the option to rollover or not rollover each category. And for those that I do want rolled over, I would like it to default to an annual amount, when that is reached then I should be flagged as going over budget
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Danny - thanks for posting this again, I also saw this above and tried it. It DOES work, but it feels like such as hack, especially the part where you go to all the trouble to plan to spend this money, then have to tell the tool to essentially ignore the spending from the sending plan. What would be far more intuitive is if at the point you release the funds to spend them on what you planned, it increases your "planned spending" by that amount, which is literally what it's doing anyway. It would be a bit of a hybrid of envelop budgeting and net zero budgeting.
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Just joined and very disappointed to see the lack of this feature. It's been requested for multiple years on this site and yet the only action appears to be asking (over a year ago) how this feature would be used.
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Coming from mint, and am kind of devastated Simplifi doesn't have the rollover feature. In all other ways Simplifi is almost precisely what I want. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE implement this. I am on my 3-month trial, and it's the only thing that's making me consider other services.
- I use rollover for two functions. The first is to save up for recurring payments. I'd rather set aside 10 dollars a month for an annual subscription than just wait for it to smack me in the face which is how the current subscription spending plan works (if there was a way to automate this in the "bills and subscriptions" part, I wouldn't mind not using rollover for it). I know I can jankily fake this with short term saving goals, but it's very inconvenient. The second is way more important and specific. I use it to allot an amount for expenses that recur but CHANGE month to month. For instance, I'm not going to spend exactly the same on gas every month, but I don't want to be penalized or think I'm going over the money I have because this month I had to fill up one extra time. For an even more important example, I live in an area where the season HEAVILY affects our home's propane usage. In the summer months, we spend almost nothing on propane for months at a time, but in winter it can go up to 300 a month. I literally cannot create spending plans for a wide number of categories that change like that month to month right now, and may be forced to record rollover MANUALLY in some sort of document.
- Rollover would allow me to keep track of how much I'm spending in general categories and limit that spending to what's available, but also makes going OVER the AVERAGE I've set significantly less stressful and MORE ACCURATE to how money is being used. The money I don't use is otherwise just going into a void month to month, which makes no sense and makes me feel a lot more squeezed for cash than I actually am.
- The only other thing I would like (and this is very much a WOULD like) would be the option to change Savings Goals in Spending Plan month to month. We are very good about setting aside money for our saving goals, but there are months where it's not feasible (such as this month when property tax slapped us in the face). In future months, however, I would like to go back to planning spending based on the assumption we're going to set aside the money again.
People have been asking for this feature for YEARS. Now that mint is shutting down, I know Simplifi is getting a ton of users just like me trying things out. Some of them may not mind, but you're losing a LOT of business to Monarch partly due to the lack of a very basic feature a lot of budgeting apps have.
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I second this. I moved from Mint to Simplifi mainly because of the budgeting and ease of use. Rollover in a specific category really helps when we can assign a fixed amount for a category per year/month and unused ones roll to the next month. It was especially helpful for a budget set out for "eating out" each month. Helps us to stay within the limits. That's the whole reason for the budgeting :) Please add this important feature to the spending plan.
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Hi - I'm new to Simplifi. I'm coming from Mint because they're shutting down sadly. Rolloving over my over/under spending is an absolute must. Mint does it within their budgets. If I'm over a buget by $100, for example, it automatically subtracts $100 from the next month. I can override it, but usually don't because I don't want to run out of cash flow in my checking account, if that makes sense. Then if I overspend, it adds that amount to the next month's budget. Please add this feature. Currently I have to add my overspending to the "available" section manually. I will miss this feature from Mint. Simplifi does several things better than Mint, except in this area.
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I'm coming from Moneydance and was attracted to Simplifi because transaction downloads are easier and it's web based. The spending plan is good. However the real shortcoming is around using savings goals inside of spending plans. Money you put into the goal counts against your spending. However, money you take out (above what you saved that month) can't be counted as income or an addition to your spending plan. Makes it really hard for me to use. Transactions to and from savings goals can't be seen, so it's hard to tell what you did a few days ago or to find a mistake.
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@btsmith52 Agree with you on this. I was just the second vote for this idea, consider voting:
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Rob Wilkens2 -
It would be awesome if the spending plan pages could be customized so they could be smaller (similar to how the transactions can be shrunk down). Right now the category boxes are really big and it's hard to take it all in at once.
Also, the spent vs money left to spend bar colors are really similar… two shades of aqua. Would be nice if those could be different colors so it's easier to see what's left to spend.
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I agree with @dunno
+1 for roll-over and the ability to set aside monthly chunks of money to prepare for non-monthly expenses.I also agree with @kw1997
+1 for a condensed view of the spending plan4 -
What I've been toying with is I create a goal for X amount monthly and then also create a transfer automation for the same value monthly. In my bank I also automated the same amount t for transfer from checking to savings.
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I would use this feature for sure as I had it with MINT. Many of accounts have a monthly have monthly amounts that accumulate to a spend that cannot be predicted like an expensive home repair. I want to have an option to have that amount accumulated. This would also help parallel future cash flow features
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It would be good if Reports included a projected Spending Plan up to a year out to give you a projection where you would be if you follow your plan.
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Another Mint refugee here -
- +1 for having rollover abilities in the Spending Plan. Similar to many above, I have seasonal expenses that don't occur ratably each month that are critical for budgeting (to spread the expense across the year) such as quarterly utilities, annual subscription fees, etc.
- Rollover allows me to better track those costs over the year (vs. only looking on the month level). It also allows me to not blow my budget each month on paper (even though those costs were taken into account for cash flow purposes).
- I agree with above users with having future Spending Plan views.
While I've seen the Goals hack above, it feels silly that we would need to utilize this option when an old system like Mint could handle it just fine. Even though I signed up for the year with Simplifi, I'm seriously considering jumping ship to Monarch for this functionality.
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Please add the ability to name separately name each split of a transaction and separately apply them against Income, Bills, and Subscriptions.
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Yet another user coming over from Mint and struggling to adapt to the lack of rollovers. I'm currently using Simplifi, Monarch, and YNAB in parallel to see which one I stick with after Mint dies. Monarch has all the features on paper, but I like the general UI of Simplifi the most. The lack of rollover is disappointing and driving me back toward Monarch though. I've hacked the SG's in Simplifi to some extent but it remains to be seen how it actually works as I'm in my first month in Simplifi still.
I use the rollover on pretty much all of my budgets that are not fixed monthly, but those all fall into 3 main categories:
- Non monthly fixed expenses like insurance and yearly subscriptions. These divide evenly into monthly buckets.
- Variable monthly expenses like Utilities that hit every month in varying amounts but I know the monthly average I need to plan for.
- Non monthly variable expenses like gifts, clothing, dining out that happen at random times for random values.
I could see the fixed non monthly being handled fairly easily in the 'bills' and 'subscriptions' sections since it's easy to divide into monthly buckets that don't change. If you could just select the frequency for a bill series (Monthly, 3 months, 6 months, year etc) these would look nice and clean in here. Obviously when the bill actually posts it should not wreck your spending plan for that month as you've already 'saved' the money to cover it.
For the more variable stuff, this is where rollover in the planned spending is so important. Some specific examples: I know I need to budget an average of $100/mo for my heat/gas bill, which varies from $50 to $150 between summer and winter. Rollover allows me to 'save' for a category without using the clunky savings goals that really aren't designed for this type of thing. The rollover is really important in both directions too. If you overshoot a budget, rolling that deficit over is pretty critical to keep you accountable for your spending. With budgets resetting back to zero every month you really lose visibility to what happened last month in that category. If I spend $150 of my $100 clothing budget and don't see that clearly in the next month, it's going to look like I have $100 to spend again. Without the rollover you don't really have a chance to recognize and deal with the fact that you blew it last month and need to tighten the belt this month to stay on track. If you want to make the decision to reset the rollover and just spend the $100 anyway at least that is a conscious choice and you don't get an automatic free pass on the overspend when the month ends.
As part of the rollover functionality I would also love the ability to more easily move that unspent $ between budgets. This could be handled a few different ways, either with releasing specific amounts that you can then allocate elsewhere, or some way of specifically 'transferring' from one category to the next. Without getting too fancy, simply having an easier way to edit a category for the month would be a start. I've been conditioned by mint which has the simple up/down arrows to quickly adjust a category budget. That makes it easy to click -$10 on one category and +$10 on another to effectively 'transfer' some of that budget. The end goal is just a clean way to decide to re-allocate $ across categories, whether they are rollover funds or just planned spending you want to move elsewhere.
TL;DR - Pleasssseeee incorporate at least basic rollover functionality and I'll stick around!5 -
Is there any update that can be shared with the community on this? Mint shutting down is big news (just take a look at the subreddit) and I think this rollover feature request would be a huge win and could practically guarantee more and more former Mint users to migrate over to Simplifi.
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I see there was an update about this feature on November 10. I'm glad to see it's now a planned feature.
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I used the Rollover Feature in Mint Budget for years….it allowed me to see my progress as I "underspend" in certain categories. I know if I don't use all my Clothing money for a few months, it adds up for a nice day out shopping in future months. The same with Food, Entertainment, etc. I chose Simplifi since it was part of Quicken, never imaging that this feature would not be available. So far, love everything else about Simplifi…but not having the option to rollover balance of spending accounts to the next months will be a deal breaker for me. Was so happy to see that, as of Nov 10, there is hope that this feature will be coming as we reevaluate and set up our budgets for 2024 :)
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Hi [removed], I made a post comparing the "Spending Plan" feature in Simplifi vs. "Budgets" feature in Mint. I find the Spending Plan in Simiplifi very counterintuitive and so do many Mint users who are going to migrate to Simiplifi. For me as a former Mint user who heavily uses the Budgets feature in Mint for budgeting and planning, this is a deal breaker for me because I can't really budget with the way Spending Plan is currently designed in Simplifi. I hope that Simplifi implements the "Budgets" feature similar to Mint. Thank you.
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The other feature I would truly like is to have the ability to set up from pay period to pay period rather than calendar month to calendar month. Perhaps users should be given the option.
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Hi, there! I am brand new to Simplifi, and looking forward to incorporating it into my family's financial wellness plan. We are new to the app, and have been impressed with how quickly the development team has addressed functionality/performance issues.
Regarding your Spending Plan questions:
- I would use rollover ability in the Spending Plan to make a decision regarding what to do with leftover funds at the end of the month - transfer to savings? Add to next month's budget? Invest?
- Rollover capability would benefit me, because it would remind me to put extra funds to work for me in whatever way I choose. An option for a "rollover decision reminder" prompt at the end of the month would be great.
- Another feature I'd like to see added to the Spending Plan would be to customize income allocation for cashflow purposes. For example, we'll have a direct deposit on the 29th. Simplifi is allocating those funds to the current month. However, from a cashflow perspective, that check would technically be used to cover the bills for the first half of the following month. It would be great to have an option to allocate recurring income to the following month's budget. I am new to Simplifi (literally started yesterday), and I am already mulling workarounds for this issue, but it would be nice to have the option built-in.
Thank you!
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