budgeting

[Phillip Shelton]

>From a lurker.

> -----Original Message-----
> Subject: Re: budgeting
> On 30 Sep, Josh Sled wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 05:06:00PM -0700, 
> nigel_gnucash-devel@unos.net wrote:
> > 
> > | FWIW, I don't personally care to know *where* my budgeted money is - I
> > | have to manage my *physical* account balances separately from my
> > | *logical* bucket system anyway.
> > 
> > I think some people will care where it is, especially as it influences
> > how accessible it is.
> 
> You're thinking maybe someone wants to buy groceries using their Debit
> Card, so they need to know not only how much is available in their
> budget, but how much is physically available in their checking account.
> I can see the importance of this, but I still think this is the user's
> responsibility, not the budgeting subsystem's.  I think we'll be
> creating a monster otherwise...

Would this be something that could be made to be a report thingie?

> > I think for medium-to-long-term savings goals, it makes sense to take
> > advantage of accounts available, such as moving savings out of my BofA
> > savings account [at like 1% or whatever it is] and into a money-market
> > [at like 4%]... or into a mutual fund which expects to get 10% over
time...
> 
> Again, I consider that to be the user's responsibility.  The budgeting
> subsystem doesn't have to know about that.

The budget should work:
   if I have only one bank account that does every thing.
   A bank account for every expense category

>  I'm not trying to say that
> it doesn't *matter* where the funds are, just that it shouldn't matter
> to the *budgeting* subsystem.  Maybe we need a separate "financial
> planning" subsystem...

I tend to agree here.

There is a place for working out where the funds should be but your
`lets-tell-the-user-how-to-make-the-most-of-his-money' is very
computationally intensive and requires the knowledge of what are the
constraints and how to state them so that you have a problem that a) has a
solution and b) that solution makes sense.  Thus should be a second or even
third round addition.

> </snip>
> > Well, there's a change in your available credit, which may be
interesting
> > for other calculations.  As well, there's the change in the 'used'
amount
> > of the budgeting category/bucket.
> 
> Sure, but the latter isn't a *physical* transfer of funds.  There's no
> associated *physical* account change.

Which is the question, How do you record the price change of a stock when
you have not bought or sold any your self at that time, under another guise.

> </snip>
> Oh, I'm not sure I like the way this is going.  I can see how that data
> would be interesting, and why you'd bring it up (and there may be a
> really good economic reason, too - I'm not an economics guy), but I'm
> concerned that pretty soon my *single* credit card payment needs to be
> associated with expenses *all*over*the*place*.

This is a problem that has turned up previously with respect to the account
hierarchy and where do you place transactions that logically occur in two
different branches.

> </snip>
> What would you use the "used:held" and "used:disbursed" numbers for?
> Some kind of "this money as been logically spent but physically exists"
> calculation?

A accounts payable/receivable type thing??

Phill