The other budgeting tool is the Spending Plan. Most of it flows out of transactions you’ve imported and categorized. This tool takes your income after bills, subscriptions, transfers, and savings are deducted, and subtracts planned spending, which can be one-time purchases or monthly expenses that fluctuate, like groceries and gas.

The app’s developers and early users found that people spend discretionary money differently each month, making it difficult to create a workable budget.

I found this strange too. I de-linked all the bills and subscriptions from the budget (spending plan) in Simplifi and added them to the planned expense section. After that, the budget is more Mint like for me.

I tried Simplifi a little bit more and I agree: their budgeting feature does not make sense to me. They separate bills and subscriptions from the spending plan, making it impossible to see every planned expense against my projected income. It also doesn’t offer an easy way to cover overspending by transferring available money from other categories.

It seems better now but I don't like how it you can't easily roll with the punches if you go over something. It's not as easy as taking from another category and applying the funds you can only increase the current category. So you don't really know how much you have to spend.

Predictable expenses that you pay monthly, like your utilities, should remain part of your monthly budget.