budgeting

Todd T. Fries todd@fries.net
Fri, 28 Sep 2001 15:04:06 -0500


Larry,Josh.

> Maybe the best thing to get this started is your input on how you have
> done budgeting [spreadsheet/paper/program-based], and how you _want_
> to do budgeting.

Can a 2nd person's input count too? ;-)

Currently, being newly married, I've reason to be dealing with fiances in a
more detailed manner than ever before.  I've just installed the redhat rpm's
for gnucash yesterday, and I'm quite happy to report that everything is
very user friendly to a UNIX person who had accounting a decade ago in high
school.

How have I done budgeting?

Spreadsheet.  Wife and I work on this together, and she only understands
Windows, so it's in excel. ;-(  However, I was charged with finding a program
that fixes the problems we've thus encountered.  So I have hope! ;-)

Currently we have a list of categories and sub-categories of places our
money goes.  Income (my check), taxes, social security, groceries,
communications, etc.  With breakdown of 1-2 levels in most cases,
imho very similar to the 'account name' sub-account concept.
There's an amount in a column for each item in the list, and to the right of
that a running total.  Further right are two columns for each month, of
'spent' money and 'not yet spent' money, which is taken from the amount in the 
column for the item in the list.  Maybe I should 'text picture it' (greatly
simplified): 
                                    August    September  October
                 Allocated Total  Spent Left Spent Left Spent Left
Income            1000     1000   
taxes              300      700    300    0   300    0     0  300
social security     50      650     50    0    50    0     0   50
groceries          200      500    172   28   210   18     0  218
communications     100      400    100    0   100    0     0  100
                            400

And on another 'sheet' we have a running log of the money we bring in
and spend.

Obviously at this point gnucash will greatly help us with keeping track
of where money is.

I'm very much tempted to setup expense accounts to be the budget, so we
can track things that way.  It would be very helpful if somehow I could
'expense' something twice.  Aka if I could write that the money, via an
electronic debit at a grocery store, disappeared from the checking account,
and was listed under both 'groceries' and 'Walmart'.  I suppose I could
create an expense category 'groceries' and have 'Walmart' underneath of
it, but this doesn't help if I want the higherarchy to be:

[-] Groceries   Expense
 |   |-Milk     Expense
 |   | |-his    Expense
 |   | `-hers   Expense
 |   |-Eggs     Expense
 |   |-Cereal   Expense
 |   |-Salad    Expense
 |   `-Bread    Expense
 |     |-wheat  Expense
 |     `-white  Expense
[-] Merchants   Expense  money leechers at large
     |-ATM Fees Expense
     |-Braums   Expense  mmm good
     `-Walmart  Expense  Do we really spend that much here?

Another thing that I cannot figure out how to do that I see the features
you're stirring over budgeting might help with is as follows.  We have
decided to have 'spending' money allocated to each of us, and if we spend
it or save it or put it under our pillow, we can do what we want with it.
So until we 'save' enough to open a savings account, we're stuck keeping
track of it being 'available' somewhere between the checking, paypal, wallet,
and purse accounts, if you know what I mean.

As for the question of 'how would I like to do budgeting' .. some of it is
answered above.

I'd like to have, as I'm sure is common for others, the ability to specify
a budget effective for a period of time, that is pretty much the same for
each period of time beyond.  We deal with a budget on a monthly basis,
although things like eating out would be nice to deal with on a weekly basis,
and other things, like car tag fees, on a yearly basis.  We also are
saving money for a few things, such as future 'hopefully not but everyone
knows how it goes' car repair, house, income reserve (economy suggesting
more and more this is wise), etc.  So I'll pretty much be sub-account'ing
a savings account in gnucash to keep track of things.  But I wonder if
it is possible to keep track of 'pools' of money independent of what
account it is in?  For example, we have 'educational savings' since my wife
goes to school full time and I take a class a semester.  Currently that
money is spread between a savings account she had before we got married,
her purse, and a new checking account just for education, although not
all the money in that checking account has yet been 'saved' for
education. (You know, the minimum opening deposit).

So for budgeting, it would be nice to keep track of money 'in' and 'out'
for a given month, and sub-categorize each to the nth degree.

[-] in
 |  |-his check
 |  `-misc refunds
[-] out
   [+] Groceries
   [+] communications
..etc..

As well as carry forward money, but not for all categories.

I don't know if this helps, but .. hopefully it provides some input you
were requesting!
-- 
Todd Fries .. todd@fries.net