Options to show discretionary spending across categories in Planned Spend?

everydave
everydave Member ✭✭
in Using the Spending Plan

I've been trying for a while to find a solution to this:

We'd like to set aside a chunk of our planned spending for "discretionary", i.e. free for all, but track it like all the others. i.e. each month we set a limit for $1000 that we can spend on whatever that's not part of specific category.

We like the view that shows up in Planned Spend, with the bar and colors as we get close/go over the allotted amount, however these views are severely limited to a specific category only. If we could do an "expense" that showed "everything else" that's not in one of the other planned spends, or even if we could do a planned spend based on a tag, then we can manage it that way. But as it is, there doesn't seem to be a way to do what we want…

I realize that "Other Spend" can give us insight into this, but it doesn't display the info in the same way as the planned spend, which is helping our household process that kind of information better.

So, the solution we have right now is a specific category that we do put most everything else into, but this nerfs our ability to really know which other categories we're spending the money on.

Any thoughts?

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  • DryHeat
    DryHeat Superuser ✭✭✭✭
    edited February 16

    @everydave

    So, the solution we have right now is a specific category that we do put most everything else into, but this nerfs our ability to really know which other categories we're spending the money on.

    A possible (but somewhat unsightly) solution is to create a parent category for "Everything Else" (or whatever) and make specific categories under that so you can more finely categorize your spending. Then make an expense series in Planned Spend for the parent category. That should create a bar graph that includes all of your child category expenses.

    DryHeat
    -Quicken Classic (1990-2020), CountAbout (2021-2024), Simplifi (2025-…)

  • everydave
    everydave Member ✭✭
    edited February 16

    @DryHeat ding OMG I never even considered that! While not the ideal situation, this might get us closer to what we need. Thank you!

  • DryHeat
    DryHeat Superuser ✭✭✭✭

    @everydave

    De nada… Espero que te funcione.

    (Now I have to go study for my Spanish class 😏)

    DryHeat
    -Quicken Classic (1990-2020), CountAbout (2021-2024), Simplifi (2025-…)

  • everydave
    everydave Member ✭✭

    Moving to another comment so it's not missed:

    so I did find one bug with this: if you do a double nested, then it's not caught up in the planned spend, for example:

    If I've got a "Leftover" main category, whatever sub category I have in there, like "Travel" gets treated as you suggested, which is great. But if I have a sub to that, say "Travel > Ride Share & Taxi" it doesn't get included in the planned spend and just shows up in the main "Other Spend" section. It seems to happen no matter what the first or second child is…

    Still this is a more workable solution than I've had before…

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