[newbie alert] Mortgage/Auto Loan/Stocks How-to ...

Mehul N. Sanghvi mehul@sanghvi.org
Mon, 11 Mar 2002 00:43:00 -0500


'allo,

    I had used GnuCash once upon a time, when it was 1.2.x and then
    briefly again when it was 1.4.x.  I am back again, trying to get a
    grasp on my finances (once again).

    I downloaded, via CVS, the latest stable tree (branch 1-6-stable),
    and tried to build it, but had no luck with it.  I will send
    another email shortly pointing out what is going wrong. 

    In the meantime I have 1.6.4 installed and running.  In my
    previous flirtations with GnuCash, I used to maintain simple
    checking and savings.  It worked great.  I now have a mortgage,
    auto loan, stocks, etc.  that I would like to also maintain.  So
    here are the questions:

    1.  How do I go about adding mortgage into GnuCash ?   I have had
        the mortgage for several years now.  Do I need to start to set
        it up so that it starts from the begining, or can I just pick
        up from here and move forward ?  What kind of account would I
        set up for this ?  With double-entry bookkeeping, would I need
        to create two accounts ? 
 
    2.  The same situation as above for the car loan.

    3.  I have stocks in a Roth IRA, along with mutual funds.  How do
        I go about adding these into GnuCash ?  Should I just start
        with what the quantity of stocks I have as off today, along
        with the average cost of each share ?  Or should I put in
        every purchase and sale ?  How do I account for stock splits
        that have occured ? 


    For the time being I believe the above questions will suffice.  Is
    there a FAQ for this, that I might have missed out on ?  I did not
    see one at the web site.


thanks,

    mehul

-- 
Mehul N. Sanghvi                  email: mehul@sanghvi.org
Superior software is always free!   URL: http://sanghvi.org/~mehul