Bills & Income - for planning

Adience

I am using Quicken Classic Windows.

For cash flow planning, I want to put in a recurring periodic "spend" because I know roughly how much I spend per month (not counting one time items). I don't want to use the "Bills" function because I don't want to enter every single bill.

But when I use the "Income & Transfer" function, the program will actually deduct this amount from my checking account (which is a not a real transaction from my checking account).

I only want to see my "projected balances" by entering this recurring estimated expense. What function should I use to achieve this?

mshiggins

How many bills do you have? Once recurring bills are set up, there is very little work needed to keep them current. And you can easily see your projected cash flow.

Adience

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20400436#Comment_20400436

it's not just bills though, my estimated recurring monthly spend I come up with is based on years of historical data of all my spending, bills + discretionary spends (partying, restaurants, etc). I want to know my checking account will always have sufficient cash flow to cover the next 12 months. I used to do this with a spreadsheet for years. this gives me the ability to adjust recurring saving amounts and still be able to see where I stand in terms of cash position 12 months from now.

UKR

If you use a "Estimated Discretionary Spending" scheduled reminder transaction to do balance planning for your checking account, do not record this reminder at the end of the month. Just skip it so it doesn't really affect your checking balance.

Unfortunately, there's nothing in the current versions of Quicken (any longer, there used to be many years ago) to estimate this discretionary spending amount for you and add it to a Balance Forecast graph.

If you set up your checking account register to "show reminders in register" for the next 30 days, as if they were real register transactions already, you'll be able to see their effect in the running balance. (See the little clock icon in the register view, top right corner, next to the Actions gear icon, to change this setting)

I've read comments and discussions elsewhere which suggest that you should maintain a minimum checking account balance of 2 - 3 months total spending as a buffer for unexpected events. This also reduces the risk of overdrawing your checking account.