budgeting

[nigel_gnucash-devel@unos.net]

On  1 Oct, Daniel Hagerty wrote:
>  > credit card? That is *completely* wrong. You paid for
>  > those items when you bought them on your credit card,
>  > and simultaneously borrowed money to do so, and the
>  > budgeting system should reflect that.
> 
>     Agreed.  That said, there *is* useful information available in
> knowing how good a job you do of moving expenses into credit (e.g. "how
> much float have I earned by avoiding paying cash for my bills?").

I'm inclined to agree with Derek Atkins, who said:
> I think part of the problem in this discussion is that people are
> coming from completely different angles and the nomenclature is
> extremely confusing.

Maybe what we should really be talking about is the *function* of a
budgeting subsystem.

In my mind, the purpose of a budget is to tell me how much money I have
left to spend in a given period on a given type of item.  That's what I
want the budget to do.

I'm not interested in a budget that calculates interest on float,
calculates finance charge interest on purchases, tells me which account
to put my savings in, or any of that.  I want to know if, given the
constraints that *I* have set, I can afford to buy a DVD player this
month without adversely affecting my ability to pay rent, buy groceries,
etc.

I'm not suggesting that all those other features are boring and useless
- far from it!  Some of those calculations are *extremely* interesting
to me (especially the interest on float one).  It's just that I don't
think those features belong in the budgeting subsystem.

What do the rest of you think?  Why does a casual user use a budget?
Why does a business user use a budget?

Have fun,

Nato