Budgeting - Let's decide what we want!

[Phil]

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 18:51:41 -0500, Jack McKinney <jackmc- 
gnucash at lorentz.com> wrote:

> Big Brother tells me that tripp+gnucash-user at perspex.com wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Jack McKinney wrote:
>>
>> >     No.  I am using subaccounts of Cash In Checking to budget.  
>> However,
>> > this means that when I reconcile with my bank, I have to go into 
>> several
>> > subaccounts to find all of the transactions.  My register trick just 
>> grabs
>> > all of the uncleared items from all subaccounts and presents them for
>> > clearing.
>>
>> A problem with this method is that not all of your budget expenditures
>> will necessarily come from cash/checking or any one account. You may, 
>> for
>> various reasons, elect to put some of those expenditures on a credit 
>> card,
>> store credit, etc.
>
> Not all of my _payments_ will come from my checking account.  However,
> it is still true that I want to budget $100 out of each paycheck for
> groceries.  Whether or not every grocery purchase comes from my checking
> account is immaterial.  What is critical is that I do not spend more than
> that $100 on groceries from my checking account.  If I do, I might not 
> have
> enough money for rent!
> What you are actually budgeting is not how much you are going to spend
> on various things.  You are only budgeting how much you are going to 
> spend
> out of a particular budgeted account.
>

You can't (shouldn't) budget asset accounts.  Only income and expense 
accounts.

Phil
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