income accounts

[bugreport19621012 at fastmail.fm]

I am new to double-entry bookkeeping.

I have several accounts with LittleCreditUnion. (Names are changed.)

In GnuCash, I have named these accounts:

Assets:LittleCreditUnion:LittleCreditUnionCHK (checking)

Assets:LittleCreditUnion:LittleCreditUnionSAV (savings)

Assets:LittleCreditUnion:LittleCreditUnionCERTIFICATE (certificate of deposit)

When my LittleCreditUnion statement tells me that I received

$5.55 dividend associated with Assets:LittleCreditUnion:LittleCreditUnionSAV

and

$25.01 dividend associated with Assets:LittleCreditUnion:LittleCreditUnionCERTIFICATE

and I want to record them in my GnuCash register, to what account should I best attribute the income?

For the time being, I have created an account called

Income:LittleCreditUnion and I attribute the dividends to that.

Then, after entering the amounts into GnuCash, Income:LittleCreditUnion shows a balance of 5.55 + 25.01 = 30.56.

Then this Income:LittleCreditUnion account keeps getting bigger and bigger; it seems merely to represent the sum of all dividends paid to me by LittleCreditUnion.

Is the proper way to think about it?

I love GnuCash and am eager to learn the proper way to think about bookkeeping.

Thank you for any wisdom on this.

Jacob Wegelin