Self loan

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Fabian Hernandez wrote:

>Merry Christmas!
>
>I wanted to create a saving habit for expenses in the future rather than financing them.  
>To do that I created sub-accounts under my savings account, one for each expected future expense.
>
>Recently one of those expenses presented before expected, I decided to lend my self some money. In reality the money does not move when I take self load, as they are all in the same bank account, but I would like to find a way to record (as best or as orthodoxically as possible).  I would like to charge interests to myself and be able to record payments.  I though about opening a liability account with the interest calculated beforehand (added to the loan amount), but registering payments does not work as money never really leaves my savings account when I pay my self-loan.
>  
>
You are creating "reserve accounts" as sub accounts of your savings. 
Nothing says that the balance of these necessarily has to be positive. 
That answers your "loan" part of the question. I have no idea how 
GnuCash will SHOW the negative asset account in your balance sheet 
(whether as a negative asset or a positive liability).

You want to record "interest"? Two different issues here.

1) Interest received from yourself. It's not "income". Just create 
another sub account in savings. As you make a bank deposit that is a 
"payment" on this "loan", a portion goes here and a portion goes toward 
bringing the balance of the negative reserve back up.

2) Interest you owe (did not pay) is not an expense. Makes the reserve 
account more negative and the uncommitted savings more positive (you 
just "borrowed" more.

The purpose of accounting is to be able to see what you are doing. A 
separate sub account under savings for "self interest" will show you the 
total that you charged yourself.

Michael