Mortgages?

[Dan Kegel]

Cool enough.  Any chance gnucash will be smart enough in the
near future to calculate that split itself?  I'd hate to have
to use an auxiliary program to figure out the split each time.
- Dan

Jason Rennie wrote:
> 
> dank@alumni.caltech.edu said:
> > Or should there be two accounts - 'mortgage interest' and 'mortgage
> > principal'? And must I manually split each payment?
> 
> That would be the proper way to do it---to have a liability account for
> the principal and an expense account for the interest.  Each payment
> subtracts from your checking, adds the principal part to your mortgage
> liability account (hence reducing your liability) and adds the interest
> part to your expense account.
> 
> Note that this works nicely with the "zero-sum" accounting philosophy. The
> large negative that initializes the liability account (the principal that
> you initially owe) is offset by an asset entry (the value of your house
> minus down payment).  i.e. after buying a house and making one payment,
> you should have a set up like this (assuming a purchase price of 200,000
> and an interest rate of about 7%):
> 
> Assets
>   Checking Account
>     -20,000: Down Payment
>     -1,200: 1st Mortgage Payment
>   House
>     +20,000: Down Payment
>     +180,000: Mortgage
> Liabilities
>   Mortgage
>     -180,000: Mortgage
>     +150: 1st Mortgage Payment
> Expenses
>   Mortgage Interest
>     +1,050: 1st Mortgage Payment