Best way to help elderly relative handle quarterly, semi-annual expenses

DryHeat · May 26

I purchased my 4th QS subscription, this time for an elderly relative who has difficulty managing her spending. It's going well, but she needs to be able to earmark funds monthly for bills and expenses that occur every few months. She wants to hold back sufficient funds monthly so that she will have what she needs when she needs it.

The usual solution, at least for me, is to set up Savings Goals, draw on those funds, and set up new Savings Goals going forward. But this is proving too complicated for her to manage.

She is also determined to keep all of her funds in her savings account and let the bank automatically transfer funds to checking to cover her transactions. She won't budge on that (don't ask, I've tried), so transferring funds monthly to savings to cover future expenses won't work for her.

Having more than one checking and one savings account is also too complicated for her and has led to confusion and overdrafts in the past.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could best help her handle this problem? Other than me logging on to her account and "fixing" it for her every month?

DannyB · May 27

@DryHeat

What do you mean by "elderly"? DON'T answer that… it's a moving target. The older I get the

further down the time line "

DannyB · May 27

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/52896#Comment_52896

I have no idea what just happened… the whole comment I was composing went wacky when I tried to make a correction and I couldn't get back into it to finish…

Short of you, or someone else stepping in to keep things straight the only other idea that comes to mind would be to fund the Savings Goal(s) from the existing savings account. I don't know if this would be any less confusing as far as what she would need to do in QS (manually contribute the monthly SG contribution and exclude the expenses from the Spending Plan when they occur) but it would eliminate the need for multiple bank accounts and transfers between accounts.

It seems that you would only need to set up one SG that would hold the funds for all nonmonthly expenses. This would show up in the accounts list under the main savings account and show the designated funds and the available funds in that account.

Like I said - not really a different solution than you have already tried, but perhaps more simplified?

(To finish my original attempt at "humor:" "The older I get the further down the timeline the "elderly" designation moves.)

DryHeat · May 27

@DannyB

All of the Savings Goals I have set up so far have had a specific target date.

What my relative needs is something like a rolling goal that she can contribute X dollars to every month and then withdraw 3X dollars every three months to pay her quarterly expense. Ideally it would just keep going without her having to set up a new goal or modify the goal every quarter — which would be confusing.

Is that how SGs with no target date work? Can they just keep on going up and down forever?

(I could experiment with this myself and eventually find out, but I would have to do so for a few months and I would rather just get the info from someone who has already done it so I can help her now.)

And "elderly" means what it has always meant — someone significantly older than me. 😏

DannyB · May 27

There is a feature request for a "never-ending" SG. A goal with no set date may work. You will still need a goal amount, a random amount or an amount sufficient to cover the expenses over a certain time horizon (one year?). You can then set the amount of the monthly contribution that is adequate to meet the needs over that time period.

I guess you could set this SG up for your relative, attach it to her savings account and see how it goes. The point for me is that she will be able to see how much of her cash in her savings account that is off limits for spending. The bookkeeping for how these funds are handled in QS remains the same of course.

It will be interesting to see how others might handle this.

P.S. LOL… yeah "someone significantly older than me." That pool of folks is significant reduced at 73 compared to 33 or even 43 😮

Best way to help elderly relative handle quarterly, semi-annual expenses

Comments

Categories