What account for family finances

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Sun Sep 20 12:02:10 EDT 2015


> On Sep 20, 2015, at 2:43 AM, Gio Bacareza <gbacareza at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> This is how we do it:
> 1. We've set up a bank account and we both put our monthly contributions
> there.
> 2. We try to spend from that bank account through a debit card.
> 3. There are times where we spend but we dont use that account. That needs
> to be tracked.
> 4. We also spend from credit cards. Sometimes I pay off the credit card.
> Sometimes she does.
> 
> The goal is to be able to track our contributions. It's easy when all
> expenses are taken out of the joint bank account. It's when we spend
> outside that account.
> 
> Now I've set it up so our contributions are "Income."
> 
> The problem I am seeing is that when I try to track contributions and
> expenses using cash flow, the expenses that are entered directly from our
> accounts eg husband account, wife account, is not captured. (I don't know
> why.)
> 
> how would you set it up?

Are you tracking the CC and your individual bank accounts too? If so the easiest way is to create separate expense account hierarchies for each of you and for household expenses. Running the Cash Flow report on the household expenses accounts will tell you how much each contributed.

If you’re only tracking the joint account, then treating contributions as income is appropriate. Make a separate income account for each of you. When one of you pays a household bill from an individual account, just record that in the income account for the person and the appropriate expense account. Seeing who’s contributed how much is then immediately visible in the running totals of each income account.

Regards,
John Ralls




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