Budgeting - Let's decide what we want!

[Derek Atkins]

"Justin Kelly" <jkelly at bkrrosenbergs.com> writes:

> Stewart
> 
> Great proposal, but personally i think it would be much easier just to
> have a feature that gives you an option to put a monthly budget figure
> in for each expense/income account in the chart if accounts and allow
> you to classify accounts into different groups(like your proposal
> (required, living, fun, etc..)), and have a simple report of actual
> total of the classified expense accounts versus budget. Personally i
> find the idea of virtual accounts a bit unnecessary.

How would you fit "savings goals" into this model?  A savings goal
isn't an expense (although I suppose you could consider it an income,
but generally it's a portion of Income:Salary).

Also, what about using budgeting as a tool to figure out what would
happen if you added a particual expense.  For example, "can I afford
this new car if I have to pay $250/mo, and what would that do to my
cash flow and savings goals?"

The problem (as I see it) is that if you tie budgetting specifically
to income/expense accounts then you cannot perform either of these two
functions.

> Just my 2c
> 
> Justin Kelly

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available