Rollover unused Spending Plan money [edited] (10 Merged Votes)

You've mentioned that the team is working on this item, do you have a link to that? I'm curious if there was an official announcement anywhere. Thanks!

Nice, thanks!

Many expenses are not reset monthly in real life, and some expenses are only incurred once every few months. Please add the ability to rollover unused/over spending on the monthly spending plan. Please also add the ability to reset the rollover to zero. This is my biggest issue with using Simplify. I may need to switch to a different app if this feature is not implemented soon.

Yea fully agree that the bills and subscriptions are superior to how Mint handled known, regular, nonmonthly items like property taxes. Which seems to be the kind of example a lot of people use for needing rollovers. But for me, and I'm sure many others, the real need for rollovers are for other areas where spending can be very irregular. Like I'm not stopping at the gas station on the last day of the month to top off just because thats when my financial tool has a cutoff date. So I could spend $50 this month and $100 next month due to when I randomly had a low tank, which is perfectly fine when trying to budget for $75 a month.

Other more sporadic things, like furnishings, vacations, etc I would actually prefer a "annual spending plan" to sit alongside the monthly one, but I'd use rollover in the meantime since that suggested idea hasn't been picked up yet and its better than any of the other existing options for tracking an annual limit.

Groceries is the #1 use case for my family - using the rollover feature, we'll make the continuous choice to be "lean" a few months (pun intended) in order to prep for a case sale or a knowingly expensive Costco run. Another use case is for Mint Mobile users who have annual plans. Yes, perhaps setting that as an annual recurring bill is one way to do it and ex-Minters like myself should adjust, but rolling budgets to "set aside" funds every month in preparation for that expense is helpful psychologically.

Looking forward to this feature being implemented.

I’m am a new user for Quicken Simplifi, and the rollover or sinking fun is a deal breaker for me. I probably would have not purchased this subscription if I knew this feature was not available. However, I’m willing to renew next year if this feature is implemented. The developers can always make the feature an option if others don’t want it.

You can turn on Early Access under settings. This feature might become available to early access users before others.

One approach that might help is if rollover is optional on a month by month basis, where instead of releasing unused funds, you could choose to roll them over to the next month.

I like that idea!

I'm sure it differs for everyone, but here are some of my reasons:

1. Savings goals require a series of manual efforts. I'm all about having tools that do work for me, not tools that I have to do extra work in. Properly implemented rollovers can be automatic.
2. Savings goals don't apply to all use cases. Groceries for example. I'm not running to the store on the last day of every month to top off my food just because I have $27 left in my budget that I don't want to lose. But if I am budgeting $500 a month and I spend $473 this month and $527 next month I hit my goal. Rollovers let me do this. Savings goals do not. The existing Spending Plan would tell me I overspent in month 2, which I did not.
3. Savings goals result in a bunch of transactions that never actually happened being entered. I did not actually transfer $500 into my vacation fund this month.
4. I am not in a financial place where I am necessarily "saving up" for some of these expenses. I already have savings. I can just as easily spend $6000 from my existing savings accounts on vacation in January and then replenish my savings throughout the year as I can not spend that money all year long and spend it in December. As long as the annual total comes out to where I want it to be. I want to budget annually instead of monthly for some periodic expenses, which is different from saving first and spending later. Rollovers do that better than savings goals.

@DannyB Yea I can appreciate why savings goals work for some people. And its not like I want to take them away from anyone. But my overarching philosophy is that giving people options is great, forcing people to do things a certain way or take manual steps because "the designer knows best" is poor design.

Agreed there will probably be complaints, because we all have our ideal in our heads as to exactly what we want it to do and its sure to miss our imaginations in some way. But there is also nothing wrong with requesting additional changes to enhancements that are implemented.

Specifically responding to the groceries example, sure there is the possibility that someone uses rollovers poorly and gets into these situations. But that sounds more like they are either budgeting improperly in the first place or using a rollover as an excuse to ignore their budget. It can be much simpler. Maybe I get groceries every Saturday. Well not every month has the same number of Saturdays. Or I bought some staples in bulk this month and now am good for the next 4 months on that item and will therefore be underspending intentionally in the future. These kinds of reasons are why groceries would be something I would use a rollover for.

I personally handle it by creating a budget and submit to reality. If I go under, that doesn't mean I have more to spend next month. It means I did well this month. If I go over next month by the same amount I went under this month, it means I broke next month's budget, not that I came out even.

At the end of a year, I can look at the average of the months and determine if I should adjust the monthly budget on an item.

I have $175 a month budgeted for groceries. If I spend $75 this month, it doesn't mean that I won't break the budget if I spend $275 next month. It may mean that I need to adjust my annual budget at the end of the year.

This is basic financial management, and it's heartbreaking to see so many people insisting on the bad workflows allowed by other applications.

"Believe it or not, there are more then one way to achieve the same goals."

Believe it or not, rollover is not one of those ways.