Best Way To Save For Future Expense

MoMoney99
MoMoney99 Member ✭✭✭
With the recent price increase by a competing personal finance software company, I'm going to be moving everything back to Quicken. The thing I'll miss is envelope budgeting. My question is this, if I have a future expense in a category say 6 months from now, is there an easy way to track this and roll it over each month so that when the 6th month finally arrives, i'll have sufficient funds for that expense?

My understanding is that the Quicken For Mac (Canadian version) doesn't support goals and there's no way to set a future dated goal like this so that I can save a bit each month. how are people handling these types of situations? Is there any roll-over budgeting features at all?

Comments

  • Jon
    Jon SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    I do my budgeting outside of Quicken, for this & a few other reasons. I run a category report and copy the amount spent in each category to a spreadsheet, and then add a few extra "virtual" spending categories. As long as my total spending (including the virtual spending) is less than my income, I've saved the desired amount. I use this to plan for homeowner's insurance & property taxes, all of which come due at the end of the year, as well as setting aside money for a new car someday.

    Quicken Mac subscription. Quicken user since 1990.

  • MoMoney99
    MoMoney99 Member ✭✭✭
    > @Jon said:
    > I do my budgeting outside of Quicken, for this & a few other reasons. I run a category report and copy the amount spent in each category to a spreadsheet, and then add a few extra "virtual" spending categories. As long as my total spending (including the virtual spending) is less than my income, I've saved the desired amount. I use this to plan for homeowner's insurance & property taxes, all of which come due at the end of the year, as well as setting aside money for a new car someday.

    Is there no way of accomplishing this right within the app itself? I was hoping to have everything personal finance related right within the quicken app without having to rely on spreadsheets.
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Unless you use the Quicken Starter Edition (which does not have this feature), you could set up your Annual Budget in Quicken for this expense category to plan for 1/12th of your annual total expense every month (2 payments per year, 6 months apart). Then, enable "Rollover" for this category and let unused amounts roll forward every month until your 2 payments (on a Scheduled Reminder) come due and subtract from the Rollover.
    Of course, the above is for budgeting purposes only. It does not make sure that you have enough cash available to pay the bill every 6 months. So, in addition to the budgeting or instead of it, for that purpose, at your bank, set up a monthly automatic transfer from your checking to a savings account for 1/12th of the annual expense. Round up the amount to create an extra cushion, in case amounts increase. And every 6 months, just before the payments come due, transfer from savings to checking enough money to cover the check you write.
  • Jon
    Jon SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    MoMoney99 said:
    > @Jon said:
    Is there no way of accomplishing this right within the app itself? I was hoping to have everything personal finance related right within the quicken app without having to rely on spreadsheets.

    The way I used to do this was as UKR described above - set up a separate savings account & transfer the desired amount each month. I believe Quicken now allows you to include transfers between accounts in your budget, so that might meet your needs.

    Quicken Mac subscription. Quicken user since 1990.

  • MoMoney99
    MoMoney99 Member ✭✭✭
    > @Jon said:
    > The way I used to do this was as UKR described above - set up a separate savings account & transfer the desired amount each month. I believe Quicken now allows you to include transfers between accounts in your budget, so that might meet your needs.

    > @UKR said:
    > Unless you use the Quicken Starter Edition (which does not have this feature), you could set up your Annual Budget in Quicken for this expense category to plan for 1/12th of your annual total expense every month (2 payments per year, 6 months apart). Then, enable "Rollover" for this category and let unused amounts roll forward every month until your 2 payments (on a Scheduled Reminder) come due and subtract from the Rollover.
    > Of course, the above is for budgeting purposes only. It does not make sure that you have enough cash available to pay the bill every 6 months. So, in addition to the budgeting or instead of it, for that purpose, at your bank, set up a monthly automatic transfer from your checking to a savings account for 1/12th of the annual expense. Round up the amount to create an extra cushion, in case amounts increase. And every 6 months, just before the payments come due, transfer from savings to checking enough money to cover the check you write.

    I'm trying to avoid creating a separate account because then my main chequing account won't be in sync or reconciled properly with my online balance with using direct bank sync. I wish they had the Goals feature in this version of Quicken. It's easily one of the most requested features but it's crazy to think we aren't on feature parity with the Windows version.
  • Jon
    Jon SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    MoMoney99 said:
    I'm trying to avoid creating a separate account because then my main chequing account won't be in sync or reconciled properly with my online balance with using direct bank sync.
    I meant I set up an actual savings account at my bank & transferred real money into it every month. My Quicken accounts were properly reconciled every month to my bank accounts. There was no minimum balance on a savings account so I could leave just $1 in it when it was time to withdraw the money.

    Quicken Mac subscription. Quicken user since 1990.

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    UKR said:
    Then, enable "Rollover" for this category and let unused amounts roll forward every month until your 2 payments (on a Scheduled Reminder) come due and subtract from the Rollover. 
    @UKR There is no Rollover feature in Quicken Mac at this time, although it's an often-requested feature which I suspect will be added at some point. 
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • DannyB52
    DannyB52 Member ✭✭
    Have you looked at Simplifi by Quicken? It's app/web based and might have what you are looking for. Simplifi is available on the Apple app store.
    B) Danny
    QW Subscription, R38.30, Windows 10 Home
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