How to account for "saving up for X"?

[Bill Wisse]

 Hi Mark

On Saturday 25 September 2004 02:12, Mark H. Wood wrote:
> Perhaps a simple question but I can't get my head around it.
>
> Every month on payday I put some money in the bank which is dedicated to
> various purposes:  a fixed amount for the month's groceries, another fixed
> amount for annual vacation, and so on.  All goes into the same savings
> account, so the bank reports a single balance.
>
> But I'd like to split these up in Gnucash, so that I can tell how much
> money I have for each purpose.  I want my savings account balance in
> Gnucash to track the balance reported by my bank, but I also want to see
> e.g. the vacation money separately and to reduce it when I take money out
> of the bank account to spend on vacation.
>
> One problem is in putting the money into the "dedicated" accounts.  When I
> deposit money in the bank, the left entry goes to the bank account and the
> right is already claimed:  it goes into income:salary.  So I need another
> transaction to dedicate a portion of the money I just banked, and that
> needs two accounts.  I can take it from expense:vacation but to where does
> it go?  Since it represents money in my possession, it's an asset, but
> what is it and where should it lie in the account hierarchy?
>
> Another problem is that I want to be able to see easily both the amount
> the bank thinks I have and the amount that I can spend on incidentals
> without compromising my dedicated savings.  I guess the only way to do
> that is for the above-mentioned second transaction to take money out of
> the bank account and put it into a subaccount.  I'm resisting this for
> some reason, but at least I'd have both balances:  the bank's notion in
> the Chart of Accounts and my nondedicated residue in the superaccount
> ledger.
>
> Comments?  I seem to have provided my own solution, but I have no
> confidence in it.



I do the same sort of thing.
I have a savingsaccount with one bank with the following:
Income from superannuation
Savings for a particular purpose
Additional income from partime work

So under current assets I have :
Savings account bank X
Subaccount:Superannuation
                   :Extra savings
                    :Income partime work.
It's easy and it gives you all the information you need.
HTH.

-- 
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Greetings from
/bill at 169 west , 19 south.  
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