Simplifi Spending Plan: Why It’s Better Than Traditional Budgeting

Let’s face it—most of us know we should budget, but many of us don’t. Traditional budgeting often remains an aspirational goal rather than a consistent practice. Why? Because maintaining a detailed, category-by-category budget month after month requires substantial work and commitment.

When we created Quicken Simplifi, we set out to solve this fundamental problem. After decades of experience with Quicken Classic budgeting and listening carefully to what customers wanted to accomplish (and what prevented them from doing it), we developed a powerful alternative that takes significantly less time to maintain — the Simplifi Spending Plan.

Spending Plan vs. traditional budgeting: top-down vs. bottom-up

Traditional category-based budgeting follows a “bottom-up” model borrowed from business practices. You build a comprehensive budget by establishing spending limits for a variety of specific categories — groceries, entertainment, dining out, clothing, and so on. This approach requires you to predict your exact spending across dozens of categories before the month even starts.

It also focuses more on restrictions than goals. Traditional budgeting emphasizes what you can’t spend rather than what you’re working toward, creating a negative framework that feels punitive rather than empowering.

Simplifi takes a refreshingly different “top-down,” positive approach that starts with the most predictable elements of your financial life: your regular income and recurring expenses (bills and subscriptions). This creates the basic framework for your Spending Plan:

Monthly Income – Monthly Recurring Expenses = Available to Spend

This simple equation gives you an immediate sense of what you can afford to spend on “discretionary” items without requiring hours of detailed category planning. But that’s just the beginning — a truly effective financial management system needs to address your complete financial life.

Beyond the basics: Planned Spending for life’s necessities

Most households have important expenses that aren’t recurring bills but aren’t completely discretionary either. Groceries are a perfect example — you don’t have a fixed monthly grocery “bill,” but you certainly need to eat.

For these kinds of expenses, Simplifi offers Planned Spending. Like a traditional budget category, Planned Spending gives you the option of assigning one-time or monthly spending targets for other necessities: groceries, medical expenses, pet care, children’s activities, and similar costs that aren’t strictly discretionary.

Our advice? Be selective about what you classify as Planned Spending — focus on the expenses that really don’t give you much flexibility. This selective approach keeps your Spending Plan manageable while ensuring your true obligations are covered.

With Planned Spending incorporated, your monthly equation becomes: 

Income – Recurring Expenses – Planned Spending = Available to Spend

Prioritizing your future with Savings Goals

Even with bills and necessities covered, you probably don’t want to spend every dime you earn each month. That’s where Savings Goals come in.

Since your Available to Spend balance already accounts for your “must-have” spending, it also provides a realistic picture of what you can save. If you create at least one general Savings Goal, you can work on saving for the future (and building long-term security) while managing your day-to-day expenses.

Simplifi’s Savings Goals follow the same top-down philosophy — determine your savings targets first (setting your financial strategy) and then spend on discretionary items with whatever you have left.

Now, with your Savings Goals added, your complete equation covers everything: 

Income – Recurring Expenses – Planned Spending – Savings Goals = Available to Spend

The beauty of this system is that your Available to Spend amount becomes truly available — funds you can spend anywhere you wish while still maintaining your financial goals. 

No more agonizing over how much to allocate for entertainment versus restaurants versus ride-sharing services each month. Simplifi keeps up with it all as you spend and shows you what’s left.

Getting the details without the drudgery

Even without category-by-category budgeting, Simplifi still provides comprehensive spending reports to help you see where every dollar goes. (The app still categorizes your spending — you just don’t have to plan it all out line by line unless you want to.)

You can also use Watchlists to keep a close eye on anything you want to track as you go (like restaurants or holiday spending). You can set those up by category, tag, or payee, so you can focus on what you care about without having to nickel-and-dime every single thing.

The Rollover option: when you want more flexibility

Traditional budgeting typically includes a “rollover” feature that transfers remaining balances in budget categories from one month to the next. For example, if you budgeted $100 for entertainment but only spent $80 in January, you’d roll over the $20 surplus to February, making your February total $120. Conversely, if you overspent by $10, you’d have only $90 available in February.

Simplifi now offers Rollovers as an option for your Planned Spending, but our Spending Plan is designed to work beautifully without it. 

Here’s why you might or might not choose to use rollovers:

For discretionary spending: monthly vs. annual

Do you like to plan your “fun” budgets monthly or yearly? If you want to keep clothes shopping or vacations under a certain amount for the year, rollovers can help. Divide your annual target by 12 and give yourself that much each month in Planned Spending. Rollovers will show you how far you are over or under your target all year long.

If you’re more focused on your monthly budget, you won’t need rollovers — and you might not even need Planned Spending. Just spend your “fun” money on anything you want!

For future expenses: savings vs rollovers

Some people use Planned Spending rollovers to “build up” funds for a future expense — like setting aside $200 each month with no intention of spending it until a property tax payment comes due six months later.

While rollovers can work for that, we generally recommend using Savings Goals instead. For expenses like property taxes, a dedicated Savings Goal lets Simplifi calculate exactly how much you need to set aside every month based on your target date. The goal becomes actively managed (requiring you to save the funds) rather than passively tracked through unspent category balances.

Understanding transfers: The key to accurate tracking

One last concept that’s essential to getting the most from your Simplifi Spending Plan is understanding transfers — transactions that move money between different accounts you own, which are neither income nor expenses.

A straightforward example is transferring funds from checking to savings. This shouldn’t be categorized as an expense because you haven’t spent the money — you’ve simply moved it. In Simplifi, categorizing these transactions as transfers ensures they won’t get tracked as spending in your spending reports or your Spending Plan.

Credit card payments are another example. You might think of a credit card payment as a “bill,” but the payment itself isn’t the expense — all the individual card transactions are. The payment simply transfers funds from your checking account to your credit card account. Only interest charges (if you carry a balance) represent additional expenses.

If you always pay your credit cards in full, categorizing these payments as transfers avoids double-counting (counting both the original purchases and the payment for those purchases). However, if you’re paying down a credit card balance, you can include the transfer in your Spending Plan to account for it in your Available to Spend calculation.

The complete financial picture

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve seen how Simplifi evolves from basic guidance (Income – Bills) to a comprehensive financial management system that models the complexity of real-world finances while keeping things remarkably straightforward:

Income –

• Bills & Subscriptions
• Planned Spending (important stuff that’s not a “bill”)
• Savings Goals
• Recurring Transfers (like credit card paydown) 

= Available to Spend

Setting up your plan may require some initial work, but it takes a lot less effort than editing individual budget values for dozens of categories each month. 

More importantly, this top-down approach prioritizes your goals by giving you clear ways to define intentional planned spending, savings targets, or debt reduction strategies instead of constantly adjusting different categories.

Once your plan is established, your Available to Spend number becomes a genuine pool of available cash. You can spend it however you want to each month, knowing that even if you use it all, your long-term financial goals remain secure.

Getting started with your Simplifi Spending Plan

Ready to experience a more strategic approach to financial management? Here’s how to get started with your Simplifi Spending Plan:

1. Begin by connecting your accounts to Simplifi so it can automatically import your income and expenses. The system will identify patterns to help establish your baseline financial picture.

2. Next, decide which non-bill necessities you want to add as Planned Spending. Remember, be selective — focus on the money you know you have to spend rather than trying to plan every category.

3. Then, establish meaningful Savings Goals. Whether you’re building an emergency fund, saving for a vacation, or working toward a down payment, prioritizing these goals will help you build financial security.

4. Finally, review your Available to Spend amount — this represents what you can spend after accounting for all your goals and obligations.

The result? A comprehensive financial system that helps you stay on track without the tedious work of traditional budgeting. Financial management finally becomes what it should be: a tool for creating the life you want.