Future allocated money, aka Envelope Budgeting

[Wm]

On 31/01/2018 16:09, Christopher Lam wrote:
> Hi Matt- I thought this should move to the devel list, because of 
> technical details, and this discussion will be very speculative.
> 
> I had a thought about how envelope budgeting could work: "divide your 
> paycheck into separate envelopes for different purposes".
> 
> A solution: *Create another type of transaction.*
> 
> There's already u(n)reconciled, (c)leared, (y)reconciled, (v)oid 
> transactions. And (f)rozen I believe is unused. Let's create a new type 
> - (b)udget. But the balances are handled differently.

[snip]


> What do we think of this?
> 
> The budget balance for an asset account represents "money remaining to 
> allocate", and the budget balance for an expense account effectively 
> represents "the upper limit that I'll allow this account to be". The 
> budget balance, minus running balance represents "money left in 
> envelope". I can increase envelope contents by transferring budget money 
> from asset to the expense accounts.
> 
> I wouldn't know how to handle credit card nor loan interest.
> 
> I think it's an interesting thought experiment. The devil will be in the 
> details.
> 
> The advantage will be that the underlying code can handle this augmented 
> functionality without major difficulty (famous last words.)

this "problem" is already "solved" in our friendly ledger-cli applications.

It is *not* a case of gnc people not knowing what to do or how to do it.

for e.g. I am, at the moment, in the process of doing my multiple view 
portfolio analysis starting from

https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Asset-Allocation

which is more or less what envelope budgeting is plus a bit.

see

https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Working-with-multiple-funds-and-accounts

The reason I don't think this is likely to get done in gnc any time soon 
(think decades) is because the UI will never satisfy anyone.

My 2 free Trump cents.

-- 
Wm