Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Wayne Bird]

Anthony,

> I think the basic thought has come up in this thread: you have some money,  
> it has a certain origin and a certain purpose, but there's not enough of  
> it, and not enough activity against it, to justify putting it in its own  
> real account, but you still want to keep track of it as if it did. So you  
> set up a subaccount, and now you have the two amounts separate. (Going  
> back to a different thread here, another purpose for this is just to  
> "hide" some cash from yourself so that you know you are covered for  
> overdrafts, bigger expenses, etc.)

This is great, this is exactly what I'm talking about.  I'm just used to putting every expense into a subaccount and then pull from that subaccount.  So, what I'll try now is having a subaccount for only certain amounts I have to keep track of separately, i.e. the gifts my wife receives.  Before, I split every paycheck into specific subaccounts, I won't do this anymore.  However, splitting my paycheck also acted as my budget because I would split it in the same way I would have if I created a separate budget.  With the subaccounts, I could easily see how I was doing with my spending.  Now it looks like I will need to create a separate budget so I can run a planned/actual expense report to see how I'm doing.  Does this make sense?

> I do think of things this way. For example: I have some money that is my  

> son's "college fund". There isn't much left any more, so it actually  

> resides in my wife's savings account. I spend a little from it every  

> semester, and I'd kind of like it to stretch over his college career. When  

> it runs out, then I know I'm spending new money on his college. I want to  

> keep all that activity conceptually distinct from what goes on with my  

> wife's savings account.

OK, your subaccount might look something like this: Assets:Savings:College Fund.  Now when you spend money from it on something like books, does your transfer look something like this: Assets:Savings:College Fund -> Expenses:College:Books ?

Wayne

> To: derek at ihtfp.com; wrbird at hotmail.com; fireflys_98 at yahoo.com
> CC: warlord at mit.edu; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
> Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:27:43 -0500
> From: adardis at gmail.com
> 
> I do think of things this way. For example: I have some money that is my  
> son's "college fund". There isn't much left any more, so it actually  
> resides in my wife's savings account. I spend a little from it every  
> semester, and I'd kind of like it to stretch over his college career. When  
> it runs out, then I know I'm spending new money on his college. I want to  
> keep all that activity conceptually distinct from what goes on with my  
> wife's savings account.
> 
> I think the basic thought has come up in this thread: you have some money,  
> it has a certain origin and a certain purpose, but there's not enough of  
> it, and not enough activity against it, to justify putting it in its own  
> real account, but you still want to keep track of it as if it did. So you  
> set up a subaccount, and now you have the two amounts separate. (Going  
> back to a different thread here, another purpose for this is just to  
> "hide" some cash from yourself so that you know you are covered for  
> overdrafts, bigger expenses, etc.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:00:43 -0500, FireFly <fireflys_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > So, my question (more curiosity than anything else)
> > Lets say you got $2000 in your net pay, and you got a $2000 gift from  
> > someone, and then you went and got a big screen TV that cost you $2000,  
> > does it matter which $2000 you spent on the TV, or simply that you got a  
> > $2000 gift, you got $2000 in salary, and you spend $2000 on the TV?
> > If it matters where it came from, for how long does it matter? Do you  
> > restrict yourself to paying for certain things with certain sources of  
> > income?
> > - James Duerr