Quicken Simplifi is a popular personal finance app that features budgeting solutions and automatic expense tracking. The sinking fund feature helps users set savings goals according to various life events, such as emergencies or vacations, and track their progress towards achieving their goals.
In addition to standard budgeting features like bill tracking, this app allows you to quickly see your projected monthly expenses and allocate money to different categories, all within a seamless interface. Plus, you can get a bird’s-eye view of all your investments and net worth.
In this guide, our team details Quicken Simplifi’s features, pros and cons, and how it compares to other budgeting apps.
Quicken Simplifi overview
What is Quicken Simplifi?
Quicken Simplifi is a customizable budgeting app that helps you manage and track your spending, subscriptions, savings, and investments. Unlike many budgeting apps, it offers a web version, which is convenient for those who prefer to work on a computer. When you connect your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and investments to the app, Simplifi automatically syncs them so you can keep up with your money in one place.
Simplifi has expanded to include a retirement planning tool that helps you plan for your future nest egg by running scenarios based on your expected retirement age, pension, and monthly income. As part of your retirement planning, you can also model future financial decisions by seeing how different choices, such as changing jobs, will affect your finances.
Key features of Quicken Simplifi
Spending plans (core functionality)
Simplifi’s spending plan is a comprehensive overview of all your accounts and transactions for the month.
This dashboard breaks down your income, bills, planned expenses, other expenses, and progress toward your goals. For example, if you set a goal to donate $250 to your emergency fund this month, and you’ve donated $50 so far, you’ll see a quick summary of how much you’ve donated so far and how much you have left to reach your goal. All of these goals are displayed in neat pie or bar graphs, making everything organized, visually appealing, and easy to understand at a glance.
automatic transaction tracking
One of Quicken Simplifi’s best features is automatic transaction tracking. This allows you to visualize all your spending in one place and see your exact balance. It also shows you how much money you have left after your planned expenses, bills, and other expenses.
Custom categories and watchlists
Once you’ve added regular expenses like your mortgage or utilities to Simplifi, you can create custom category bubbles to categorize your remaining expenses. Bubble categories can be easily moved and changed to suit how you want to categorize your spending.
Click on any bubble to see the complete list of transactions that make up this category, and adjust your transactions to fit into another category if it suits your budgeting style. Some users have reported issues with transactions reverting to the previous category, so keep this in mind.
Bill and subscription tracking
Simplifi easily displays the total of your monthly recurring bills such as utilities, subscriptions, and rent. Other monthly bills, such as credit card payments or transfers, will appear in the (Excluded this month) section below your regular bill.
You can adjust your billing amount or subscription cost at any time by setting a custom amount. This is useful if your bill is about to change. Similarly, if you cancel your subscription or no longer receive a particular charge, you can also remove recurring expenses here.
Reports and insights
Simplifi offers many great features, including predicting more consistent non-bill expenses like rent and subscriptions. The following screenshot shows an example of a report that shows how much you’re likely to spend outside of regular bills based on past spending. I like the ability to use custom buffers to predict average spending, giving you more control within your budget.
Quicken Simplifi Pricing
Free version
At this time, Quicken Simplifi does not offer a free version or free trial. However, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
premium version
Quicken Simplifi has one tier, typically $6.99 per month (billed annually) for the first year, or $3.99 per month (billed annually). When our team downloaded the app, we were offered a new monthly subscription option for $9.99.
The premium version of Quicken Simplifi includes personal finance features such as net worth and expense tracking, investments, and cash flow, all in one dashboard. There is a mobile version and a web version.
additional cost
Quicken Simplifi doesn’t have any in-app features that cost extra, but it can be bundled with one of Quicken’s other services, LifeHub.
Quicken LifeHub is a life organization system that stores important family information such as wills, health directives, internet passwords, travel documents, and emergency health information. You can also save your pet’s records and care instructions, so you can keep everything together if you suddenly need to leave your pet with someone.
Quicken LifeHub currently costs $3.99 per month for the first year (billed annually) or $1.99 per month (billed annually).
Pros and cons of Quicken Simplifi
Strong Points
- Offers both mobile and desktop apps
- Provides a complete overview of all your financial accounts in one place
- Connect to over 14,000 different financial institutions
Cons
- No free trial or free version offered
- Parameter options are missing when viewing or creating a report
- No bill payment function
Comparing Quicken Simplifi to other budgeting apps
Let’s take a quick look at how Quicken Simplifi compares to other budgeting apps in terms of pricing, availability, partner access, security features, and best users.
Recommendation: Who is Quicken Simplifi best for?
Budgeters who prefer a simple interface of pie and bar charts will enjoy setting up Simplifi. If you like tapping into your savings, the Savings Goals feature is especially useful because it allows you to instantly set savings goals specific to your specific needs, such as an emergency fund or vacation fund. That way, your spending plan will help you figure out how much you’re saving toward that fund each month.
Overall, I recommend Quicken Simplifi to anyone looking for a flexible budgeting app. Unlike other budgeting apps, Simplifi doesn’t force you to choose a specific budgeting system. Instead, it uses your monthly income and expenses to create a personalized spending plan that automatically adjusts as your spending changes. This gives you the flexibility to follow multiple budget plans, such as the 50-30-20 plan and envelope budgets.
Who should skip?
If you want customized feedback on your investments and spending, Simplifi is not for you. Other apps that use AI or offer financial advisory services, such as Origin, specialize in tracking market trends and providing accurate investment feedback, so they may be better options for meticulous investors. Simplifi is more of an investment tracking and forecasting tool than an in-depth investment analysis tool.
Bottom line: Is Quicken Simplifi worth it?
Quicken Simplifi is valuable for users interested in customized spending plans, user-friendly interfaces, and sinking fund-style savings plans. The app’s detailed savings plans, affordable pricing, and personalized reports make it a top-notch option for both beginners and experienced budgeters interested in detailed categories, projected spending plans, and sinking fund creation.
FAQ
Is Quicken Simplifi free?
No, Quicken Simplifi is not free, but the provider offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Is Quicken Simplifi better than Mint?
Quicken Simplifi is considered one of the best options since the closure of Mint. Simplifi offers an ad-free experience, more comprehensive spending planning options, and faster and more extensive account syncing than Mint. Simplifi is one of the most affordable budgeting apps on the market and, according to customer reviews, offers reliable financial management features with better automation than Mint.
Does Quicken Simplifi track my investments?
Yes, Quicken Simplifi has a pretty dashboard that displays your investments’ current market value, today’s changes, and total profit. Easily check overall performance and individual holdings.
Is Quicken Simplifi suitable for beginners?
Quicken Simplifi is considered suitable for beginners due to its minimalist, clean dashboard and built-in automated features to track and categorize your spending and monitor your net worth.
Is Quicken Simplifi safe?
Quicken Simplifi is a secure app that uses robust data encryption, multi-factor authentication, and advanced encryption for sensitive data at rest. Simplifi meets rigorous security certifications such as SOC 2, which is part of a comprehensive external audit that assesses the security, confidentiality, and privacy of program data.
