Discretionary Member Encumbrances

Wm tcnw81 at tarrcity.demon.co.uk
Wed Jul 20 17:00:57 EDT 2016


On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 08:57:14 -0400, in gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnucash.user,
Aaron Laws <dartme18 at gmail.com> wrote:

>>
>> On 7/14/2016 9:46 AM, Aaron Laws wrote:
>>>
>>>> In my personal books, my wife and I have discretionary accounts that are
>>>> populated when we exercise or eat healthily. We then spend the money as
>>>> we
>>>> like. The money never actually moves from our checking account until it's
>>>> spent. How should I be accounting for this in my books? For the two
>>>> transaction types: populating the discretionary account and spending
>>>> money
>>>> from that discretionary account, how should they look? What type of
>>>> account
>>>> should the discretionary account be? Thanks!
>>>
>>>
> Another suggestion I received is to create a liability:Discretionary. When
> money is "earned" into the discretionary pile, the transaction looks like
> this:
> 
> expense:exercise rewards      5
>           Discretionary                              5
> 
> And when money is spent from it:
> 
> Discretionary                 5
>              Credit card                     5
> 
> This has the added benefit of not hitting other expense accounts ("junk
> food" in my previous example). What are everyone's thoughts on this? Thanks
> again!

Another approach, specific to made up income and expenses (by made up I
mean not involving money in the sense understood by most people external to
a relationship) is to deliberately place the Income and Expense legs under
Equity and then use those accounts to manipulate the Asset and Liability
accounts however you like.  To some extent this is an intellectual exercise
because Income and Expense are variations on Equity anyway, it is just
making it a bit more obvious that arbitrary value rather than money is
involved until money really is involved.

I'm not sure I should be giving myself or my female friend monetary rewards
for certain behaviour ... but maybe that is a difference in our approach to
women.  I wouldn't vote for Trump and you might :)

-- 
Wm



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