The limits to actual spending capacities represents a matter of critical policy relevance as well as political importance. It is even more urgent to examine and address it as governments and other executive bodies have mobilized massive amounts of funds to respond to multifaceted economic crises and the still ongoing energy crisis. Financial indicators are no more recognized as the most appropriate way to evaluate programmers' performance as proxies for output and outcome indicators. Against this backdrop, we suggest that an analysis of past expenditure trends may point to underspending or delays that, in turn, could represent a "warning bell" of scarce impact and underperformance both in current and future investments implemented with similar financial instruments and in the same area.